


Stand Fast and Damn the Devil

by OsheenNevoy



Category: Dark Shadows (1966)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-07
Updated: 2014-03-18
Packaged: 2018-01-07 20:45:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 62,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1124205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OsheenNevoy/pseuds/OsheenNevoy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bill Malloy has narrowly escaped being murdered, and now is married to the woman of his dreams.  He didn't realize that "for better or for worse" in this case includes ghosts, family curses, and time travel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been trying to resist writing Dark Shadows fan fiction for a year or so now, but I finally had to give in. We’ve recently started watching, for the first time, the first year of the show, and I fell in love with the character of ill-fated fishing fleet manager Bill Malloy (namesake for the “Who Killed Bill Malloy?” story arc!). As is my usual pattern, I started wondering what would happen if this character were introduced into some other story line(s) of the show. I was also rather shocked to discover that there is very little (or no?) Bill Malloy fan fiction being written, or at least posted. Hence this story.
> 
> In those early days of the show, they were making a serious effort to make their setting and some of the characters realistic for “Down East” Maine. Bill Malloy is one of the characters who recognizably speaks in Down East “Mainah” dialect (as I’ve learned from researching the topic since starting this story!). A major feature of said dialect, which Malloy definitely uses in the show, is the word “ay-yup” (variously spelled “ah-yup,” “ayup,” etc.), a Down East version of “yeah” or “yep.” Thus you will see that word used at various points in Bill’s dialogue here.
> 
> The story’s title is adapted from an early line of Bill’s in which he describes the reasons he admires Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. This WIP may be revised as we continue to watch the show, but I was too excited over my first fanfic in a couple of years to resist posting Chapter One at once. And I’d like to encourage any Dark Shadows fans who haven’t done so, to watch those early episodes. Give my love to Bill Malloy when you see him!
> 
> Oh, and yes – I don’t own Dark Shadows (alas!); it’s the intellectual property of Dan Curtis, and my only profit from this is the fun of enjoying some adventures with the one-and-only Mr. Bill Malloy (and some others of the gang from the Great House of Collinwood).

** Stand Fast and Damn the Devil **

_A Dark Shadows Fan Fiction_

  **Chapter One**

_My name is Bill Malloy.  And my life is wonderful._

_I’m not saying I think it’s perfect.  A man who reaches 55 years and still thinks anything in the world is perfect, is an idiot.  There’s always darkness and evil out there, and things going to hell in a hand basket because that’s the way life is._

_But right now, my life is more wonderful than it has ever been._

A spear of sunlight stabbed between the dark brocade curtains.  Bill Malloy thought it was probably the sun on his face that woke him.  He didn’t grudge waking up.  At this moment he was too happy for him to want to waste any more time in sleeping.

Beside him, Liz was still asleep.  She lay on her side, with her face turned toward him.  One of her lovely, delicate hands was tucked under the pillow.  Bill reached out and touched a lock of her hair.  

He wanted to touch her face, too.  He wanted to touch a hell of a lot more of her.  But he didn’t want to wake her up.  It was a privilege for him to treasure, just being able to lie here and watch her sleep.  There was awe and wonder in knowing that, Lord willin’, he would wake up with Liz beside him every day for the rest of his life.  He would wake up and know that despite every obstacle, after all those years, he was married to the woman of his dreams. 

Bill glanced over to the clock on the bedside table.  6:35.  On most days, he would have been up and about already for a half an hour by now.  He would have showered, dressed, and he’d be starting in on his oatmeal, orange juice and coffee, before heading down to the docks to see the fleet set out.

But most days weren’t the morning after his wedding night.

He gazed at Liz again.  He thought how impossible it would be to ever put all his feelings for her into words.

She was wearing less makeup than she did in the daytime.  There were just the faint traces of makeup she had put on late last night when they finally turned their attention to sleep.  To see her like this, in her light makeup and the innocence of sleep – it made him think of Liz as she was 21 years ago, when they so briefly dated.  When Elizabeth Collins had just inherited Collins Enterprises, and Bill Malloy was a newly-hired deckhand in her fishing fleet.  When their few casual dates had started him hoping for so much more – and she had announced she would marry Paul Stoddard.

_You never know about life,_ he thought. 

Twenty-one years ago, he’d made an unspoken vow that if he couldn’t have her himself, he would devote his life to her service, instead. 

Eight months ago, he narrowly escaped getting murdered by a fellow devoted family servant.

Three weeks ago, Liz had her feet firmly planted on the path of marrying the slimiest piece of filth to crawl off the Emerald Isle.

Then came the revelation that 18 years ago, she had killed Paul Stoddard, and Jason McGuire had buried him in Collinwood’s cellar.  And _then_ , after Bill and Sheriff Patterson had dug up the cellar, came the revelation that she hadn’t killed her husband after all, and the vile McGuire had been blackmailing her for a murder she hadn’t committed. 

It was one of Bill’s most satisfying accomplishments of recent years, when he beat the tar out of the vile McGuire in the foyer of Collinwood.  The sheriff and Roger Collins were able to pull Bill off McGuire before he could completely pulverize the bastard.  But it would be some time before the Irishman’s battered face could manage his trademark smirk again.

Bill had also taken thorough enjoyment from throwing all of McGuire’s belongings into a couple of suitcases and pointedly leaving them outside Collinwood’s front door. 

Of course, there was a bit of a mystery over where McGuire had gone.  George Patterson confessed himself troubled over it, when there was no evidence of McGuire taking a train or bus out of town.  But the suitcases were gone the next morning.  Bill figured the S.O.B. had simply convinced one of his lowlife friends to give him a lift.  The sort of person who associated with Jason McGuire, was not always likely to want to chat with the sheriff. 

Elizabeth Collins Stoddard had not left the grounds of Collinwood in 18 years, since the night she believed she had murdered her husband.  When she set forth for the first time, a few days after Jason McGuire’s departure, she asked Bill Malloy to go with her.

Her daughter Carolyn, or her brother Roger, or Vicki Winters the governess, would all have been delighted to accompany her.  But Liz confessed to Bill, with a shaky smile, that she didn’t want to face taking this step in their company.  She told him they would expect too much of her.  They would be trying too hard to make the day perfect for her. 

Bill, she could trust not to push her.  She knew he would let her do what she needed to do.

Bill drove her to Bangor.  They had lunch together.  They window shopped.  When they got back to Collinsport, they took a walk on the beach.

He took her home, and she invited him into the drawing room for a drink.  There were tears in her eyes as she turned to him and thanked him for that day.

Bill Malloy hadn’t planned the words he spoke to her then.  There just seemed nothing else he could do.  He seized her shoulders and said, “Liz, Paul Stoddard is gone.  Good riddance.  He’s gone and you didn’t kill him.  You’ve finally divorced him.  You’re free.  You were going to marry that bastard McGuire for all the wrong reasons.  Marry me instead.  Marry me for the right reasons.”

Sometimes he still could hardly believe that her answer to him had been “yes.”

Lying in their bed, he grinned at his memories.  He thought, _Who needs that nonsense about marrying fresh out of high school_ – or marrying fresh out of the Army, as would have been his case if Liz had married him when he first dreamed of asking her.  This sort of experience was too danged fine to be wasted on young people.  A young man would ruin things by rushing too much, and being nervous, and not treating his woman with the respect and care she deserved.     

Of course, Bill freely admitted, he would have married Liz at any moment over these past 21 years.  But after what they’d shared last night, he had no regrets that they had waited this long for it.  He would not trade last night for any other experience in this life.

Bill Malloy always insisted to himself he would never say that anything was perfect.  But his and Liz’s wedding night could just about tempt him into using that word.

The wedding itself had gone without hiccups as well.  Of course, he thought, one reason it went so smoothly might be that everyone was so darned relieved Liz was marrying him rather than that pond scum McGuire.

It was a simple ceremony, fitting for a woman who was the subject of more Collinsport gossip than anyone else in town.  She had no desire to put herself in any more spotlight than she had to.  For her to marry the manager of her fishing fleet, three weeks after being set to marry Jason McGuire, would set enough tongues wagging anyway.  She certainly did not need or want a big society wedding.

They married in the Collinwood drawing room, Judge Crathorne looking pleased as Punch to be splicing Liz to Malloy instead of McGuire.  Carolyn was her mother’s bridesmaid, radiant with happiness and relief, and noticeably unconcerned by supposed boyfriend Buzz Hackett not being included on the guest list.  Roger gave the bride away.  Roger’s son David, looking purposeful and solemn, was the ring-bearer.  Joe Haskell was Bill’s best man, and their few guests were Bill’s niece and grand-niece, his housekeeper Sarah Johnson, Vicki Winters, and the ubiquitous Cousin Barnabas Collins. 

All were invited to dinner afterwards in Collinwood’s grand dining room – the first time the room had been used since Paul Stoddard’s disappearance.  Wisely, Liz had hired a caterer.  She did not need to be cooking on her wedding day.  And Sarah Johnson’s cooking, while suited to the simple tastes of Bill Malloy, did not suggest that the housekeeper had a future ahead of her as a banquet caterer.

Dinner was pleasant, the toasts offered to the happy couple were respectful and affectionate, and best of all, no one outstayed their welcome.  Guests and wedding party made themselves scarce as soon as politeness allowed, and bride and groom were left to enjoy their night.

The only thing that had troubled him about their wedding, Bill thought, was asking Joe Haskell to stand by him in the ceremony. 

It wasn’t that he thought Joe unworthy of the distinction.  Joe was worthy and then some.  But he had worried it was callous of him, asking Joe to attend a wedding this soon after poor Maggie Evans’ death.

He’d told Joe that, flat out.  He had said, “Joe, I’d like you to stand up with me in this.  But I don’t want you doing it if it’s going to bring you pain.  What with poor Maggie … If you’d rather not do it, Joe, just tell me.”

The young man gave a faint smile, looked away almost guiltily, and ran a hand through his hair.  When Joe looked back, he said earnestly, “Mr. Malloy, I want to stand by you.  I’m honored you asked me.  I don’t want to let you down.  Maggie … Maggie wouldn’t want me to back out of it because of her.”

A middle-aged bridegroom who seldom drank anything stronger than coffee, was not a likely candidate for a stag party.  And frankly he was glad that no one had tried springing anything like that on him.  All he had done the night before the wedding was offer to take Joe out for a drink.

At that, Haskell admitted, “There’s not much of anywhere to go but the Blue Whale.  And I’d rather not go there if it’s all the same to you.  I’ve … I’ve been spending too many hours there lately – trying to convince Sam Evans to lay off the booze.”

So groom and best man had gone to Malloy’s house for a whiskey.  When Bill asked Joe if he wanted another, the younger man answered shakily, “No thanks, Mr. Malloy.  When I drink much these days … it’s too hard for me to stop thinking of Maggie.”

Damn, Bill hated to see that boy’s broken heart.  He’d told Haskell then, “You shouldn’t stop thinking of her, Joe.  Just try to believe that … someday you’ll be able to think of her and it won’t cause so much pain.”

Joe had smiled a brave and absolutely miserable smile.  Bill Malloy felt a lump in his throat, and swigged down the last of his whiskey.  Hating how useless he felt, he kept searching for something to say that might possibly do some good. 

“Did you ever read _The Three Musketeers_?” he asked.

Surprised by the question, Joe got a less haunted-looking smile on his face.  “Sure, years ago.  All for one and one for all, right?”

“That’s right.  There’s another quote I always liked, from right at the end of the book.  In the very last paragraph, Athos tells d’Artagnan, ‘You’re young.  Your bitter memories have time to change into happy ones.’”

Nothing could really help, of course.  But Haskell seemed to appreciate the effort.  “I hope you’re right, Mr. Malloy.  Now you’d better give me one last very small drink, so I can drink to your happy memories.”

_Happy memories,_ Bill thought now, watching the sleeping Liz.  _We’ve got those now, all right.  And we are going to have many, many more of them._

He wanted to be here with her when Liz woke up.  He had no intention of letting her wake to an empty bed.  That was _not_ the message he wanted to convey on the first morning of their marriage.  _But good intentions or no,_ he thought, _the most devoted and determined bridegroom still needs to answer the call of nature._

He would just have to hope he could make it down the hall to the bathroom and back again while Liz was still asleep.  Cautiously he got out of bed, got into his slippers and bathrobe, and started his first attempt at walking silently over the creaking floorboards of Collinwood.

Bill managed his escape from the bedroom, apparently without waking his wife.  As soon as he was out in the corridor, he had to grin at how ridiculous he felt.  Walking through Collinwood’s halls in his pajamas and bathrobe would take getting used to, considering that until last night the great house had been an extension of his workplace.  This felt like the kind of dream where one finds oneself naked in the middle of a shareholders’ meeting, and tries to conceal one’s nakedness behind the conference table and a stack of profit-and-loss reports.

It didn’t take long to reach the bathroom that, until last night, had been used by Liz alone.  Another bathroom further along the corridor was shared by Carolyn, Miss Winters and David.  In addition, a small closet near the door from the landing had been converted to hold a very cramped toilet and sink.  Bill thought this third toilet on the second floor had been one of the 20th century’s most essential additions to Collinwood.  He could easily imagine occasions when the ladies of the household had possession of the two larger bathrooms, when things might get desperate if it weren’t for that third toilet.

His bathroom visit was another surreal experience.  It really would take a while to convince himself that this bathroom was now his.  He wondered how long he had to live in Collinwood before he could shake off the feeling of being in a grand, if seedy, hotel.

Of course, a hotel bathroom wouldn’t be so full of perfume, soaps, make-up, and Lord knew what all those jars and bottles contained.  Not that it was anything less than scrupulously tidy and organized.  Liz would never stoop to something so low-bred as clutter.  It was just that all the shelves and cupboards were very, very full.  Bill’s lone toothbrush and shaving kit looked sorely outnumbered by the platoons of feminine accoutrements.

After a brief interval of rubbernecking at the bathroom, he was ready to hurry back to his wife.  He stepped into the hallway.  That was when he heard the sound.

Crying.  A weird, uncanny sort of sobbing that seemed to go on and on.  He thought it was probably a woman’s voice, but he couldn’t tell for sure.

He absolutely did not think Liz was making that sound.  But he had to make certain.  A few steps brought him to their door, which he quietly opened.

Liz’s position seemed unaltered since he’d left.  She lay on her side, her slumbers apparently untroubled – not even troubled by the sobbing that seemed to sound from everywhere around them.

_Where the hell_ is _it coming from?_ Bill wondered as he pulled the door softly shut.  He thought, _It’s the darnedest thing._ He couldn’t pin down the source of the sound to any particular direction.  _Maybe,_ he thought, _it’s being carried through the heating pipes._ In which case, it could originate just about anywhere.

He certainly hoped it wasn’t his niece or grand-niece crying like that.  If he hadn’t solved the mystery by then, he would ask Helen and Jenny about it when he saw them this morning.  It wouldn’t be a problem for him to ask Carolyn about it, either.  The only woman in the house he didn’t feel comfortable asking was Victoria Winters.  But he could always get Carolyn to speak with her about it, if it came to that.

Or, he supposed, there was one other possibility.  Mrs. Johnson had been planning to go back home after dinner – to the house that she and Bill would both be moving out of over the next few days.  But maybe Roger or Carolyn or Miss Winters had made up a guest room for her so she could stay over, last night.  The only thing was, he couldn’t begin to imagine his no-nonsense housekeeper sobbing her heart out like that.

A patently absurd idea popped into his mind.  Had Sarah Johnson been secretly in love with him, all these years she’d worked for him?  Had she faced her hidden passion only now, when Bill was married?

_Sure,_ he thought.  _Because I’m just the kind of smoldering heart-throb people go around secretly pining for._

_It’s soap opera stuff.  That kind of thing never happens in real life._  

Not in his real life, anyway.  He was pretty darned sure it didn’t happen in the real life of Sarah Johnson, either. 

Of course, he had been in love with Liz for 21 years.  But he hadn’t been hiding that love while living in the same house with her.  And he thought that if anyone had cared to notice, his unspoken love must have been glaringly obvious.  

If Sarah was in love with him all these years she had lived in his house, then she had a hell of a lot better poker face than Bill did.

No, if that _was_ Sarah Johnson crying, Bill’s wedding was not the cause.  More likely, the poor woman was worrying over that turd of a son of hers.

Experimentally, he tried walking a ways up the corridor, towards the door to the closed-off west wing.  Then he turned and headed the opposite way, toward the door to the grand staircase.

He thought maybe it sounded just _slightly_ louder, the closer he got to the staircase.  So he mentally shrugged, opened the door and walked onto the landing.

Bill wasn’t sure if the crying was louder out here, or not.  At least he thought it wasn’t any quieter.

_How could it be coming through the heating pipes?_ he demanded of himself.  If the acoustics worked like that, then anything spoken or done near any furnace grate should be broadcast throughout the house. 

_Broadcast,_ he thought.  _Maybe that’s it.  Maybe it’s David._

The little devil could have rigged up some kind of loudspeaker system, with some tape-recorded crying, and attached it to one of the furnace pipes.  Maybe as a friendly little way of welcoming his new uncle to the house on the hill.

Bill grinned a little at the notion.  _Hell,_ he thought, _I_ hope _it’s David._

High tech deviltry by the holy terror of Collinwood was a lot easier to stomach than – than a house where the walls throbbed with tortured, disembodied sobs.

He’d been walking down the grand staircase while he pondered the question.  Down in the foyer, he thought just _maybe_ the noise was slightly louder, now.  And maybe, again, it sounded like it could be coming from the drawing room.

He walked quickly to the door and flung it open.  That dramatic gesture yielded nothing at all.  As he walked in, he saw the room held no mysterious sobber.  Not unless the sobber was hiding behind a curtain.  And the sound of the sobbing continued all around him.

_A recording,_ he insisted.  _It has to be._

Anyone would have to stop to catch his or her breath sometime, if the sobs came from any living person’s throat.

Despite himself, Bill jumped in surprise when he glanced behind him and saw a figure standing in the drawing room doorway.

The “figure,” he realized in the next instant, was Miss Victoria Winters.  Like him, the governess was wearing slippers, pajamas and bathrobe.  Bill thought the two of them looked like members of the same club.  Did the Mickey Mouse Club ever do a show in their pajamas?

How many more pajama-clad members of the Collins household would he meet before he got back to bed?

Miss Winters stepped into the room and said solemnly, “You hear it, don’t you.”

“Ay-yuh,” he told her.  Something about her expression and tone made him ask, “Would I be right in thinking you’ve heard this before?”

She nodded and then walked over to him.  They stood by the sofa, the sobs continuing unabated around them. 

“I’ve heard it many times,” Miss Winters continued quietly.  “It happened more frequently when I first arrived.  I don’t think I’ve heard it for … two or three months, now.”

“And have other people heard it?”

She smiled wanly.  “Everyone who lives here, I think.”

“What do they say it is?”

With her somber, dark-eyed gaze, Vicki Winters answered, “Roger, Carolyn and David all say it’s ghosts.  I was never quite sure how seriously Roger or Carolyn meant that.  But I think they both really believe it, now.  Or they almost believe it.  David does believe it.  There’s no doubt of that.”

He asked, “What does Liz say about it?”

“Mrs. Stoddard – ” she began, then she interrupted herself with a bright smile at him.  “I mean, Mrs. Malloy – she always says it’s the wind through the pipes; maybe blowing through from one of the closed-off wings of the house.  Of course,” Miss Winters continued, “sometimes I’ve heard it when there isn’t any wind.”

She frowned slightly as she thought back.  “When I was first here, it often seemed to be coming from the basement.  From the room that was locked.  It doesn’t seem to be doing that tonight, though.”

Bill speculated, “Maybe there’s been too much activity down there for it to feel comfortable in the cellar anymore.” 

He thought about what Miss Winters had said.  Nothing in what she’d told him thus far ruled out the theory that young David had hidden a tape recorder in a heating pipe. 

“Miss Winters,” he pursued, “could you think back to what Carolyn’s said about it?  Did she ever tell you if she’d heard these sounds before Roger and David moved in?”

Miss Winters looked a little startled at the question.  But she didn’t ask him about it.  Hesitatingly she told him, “I think she did.  I think she told me she’d heard sounds like this in Collinwood all the time she was growing up.”  Sounding more certain of her facts now, the governess nodded and went on, “I’m pretty sure Roger said something to me once, too, about hearing the ghosts cry when he was a child here.”

_All right,_ Bill thought regretfully.  _If that’s true, then so much for David’s loudspeaker._  

_Unless the little monster heard his family’s stories of crying ghosts, and decided to rig up some spook show sound effects to scare the bejesus out of his relatives._

_How am I going to prove that, short of David confessing?  I foresee a lot of poking around heating pipes in my near future._

Deciding to drop the idea for now, he went back to Miss Winters’ testimony.  “You haven’t heard it for two or three months, you say.”  Bill grimaced.  “I hope the timing doesn’t mean anything.  I’d hate to think the ghost disapproves of Liz marrying me.”

Everything suddenly went silent.  The sobbing was gone.

For a moment the two of them could do nothing but stare at each other.  Then Bill managed to remark, “I guess it doesn’t approve of me making jokes about it, either.”

The silence around them was shocking.  Vicki Winters said with only a slight quaver in her voice, “I don’t think it’s you.  Maybe it happens when anyone new moves into the house.  Whenever – whenever the energies around it change.”

Bill demanded, “It didn’t happen when Jason McGuire moved in, did it?”

“No – I don’t think so.”

“Hmph.  Maybe when he turned up, the ghost had the good taste to go into hiding.”

Vicki Winters put a hand to her mouth to hastily stifle a giggle.  Solemn again, she went on, “Mr. Malloy – it’s not just people hearing things.  You know we held a séance a few months ago.  Some of us were convinced that Josette Collins spoke to us, warning us of danger.  And later, I saw the spirit of a woman in a long white dress.  I believe that was Josette Collins, too.  She warned me to save David – when that horrible thing happened with his mother.   And then, of course … Mr. Morgan also told me he had seen ghosts here at Collinwood.”  She glanced at Bill in obvious apology for mentioning the groundskeeper who had almost killed him.

“Ay-yuh,” Bill muttered.  “Matthew did always say he saw the ghosts.  I always assumed his imagination ran away with him.  And then,” Bill added, absently rubbing at his neck, “then I just assumed it was thanks to him being crazy.”

He sighed and shook his head.  He tried to forget the feeling of Matthew Morgan’s fingers about his throat.

“What do you think?” he asked her.  “Have we talked this thing to death for one morning?”

“I think we have,” she said.

“I have to get back to Liz,” he reminded himself, hit by a jolt of guilt. 

The governess offered kindly, “I was going to fix myself some breakfast.  Can I bring you and Mrs. Malloy anything?”

“Some coffee, if you would.”

“Of course.  I’ll leave it outside your door.”

“You’re an angel, Miss Winters.” 

For a moment the absurdity of the situation washed over him.  He suggested, “Since we’ve gone hunting ghosts in our pajamas together, shall we make it ‘Vicki’ and ‘Bill’ from now on?”

Victoria Winters grinned at him.  “All right, Bill,” she answered.  Then she added, “Welcome to Collinwood.”

Now he was no longer worried about trying to walk silently.  If the sobbing ghost hadn’t woken people up, then his footsteps weren’t going to.  He just about bounded up the staircase.

He thought, _Either Collinwood really is packed to the gills with ghosts, or everyone who lives here goes crazy._

It was a speedy process of going insane, too.  From what he could see, the process took just one night.

_It’s a fast worker,_ he told himself, _our great old house on the hill._

Liz apparently had not woken up.  But from the look of things, the sobbing had made some inroads on her.  She had pulled the sheet up higher around her.  A little frown knit her brows as she slept.

Bill sat on the bed and watched her.  After a time, her frown vanished.  She sighed and loosened her grasp on the sheet.

And then, with her eyes still closed, she murmured sleepily, “Bill?”

Bill Malloy reached out and took his wife’s hand.  She opened her eyes.

“You’re here,” Liz whispered. 

“I’m here.”  For a crazy moment, just to see her watching him with that small smile of hers brought him close to tears.  He knew he had never seen a more beautiful sight than this. 

Although some views he’d had of her last night, gave this sight a run for its money.

Her gaze noting his bathrobe, Liz asked, “You’ve been out already?”

“Ay-yuh,” he assented.  He told himself there was absolutely no call for him to mention hypothetical crying ghosts.  “I asked Miss Winters to bring us some coffee.  She’s probably discreetly left it at the door by now.  You want me to check?”

“Not yet,” said Elizabeth Collins Malloy.  She sat up, the sheet falling away from her.  In the sleeveless white satin night-dress she’d donned at the end of the night, she reminded him of the movie stars he had crushes on when he was young.

Randomly he thought, _When I was twenty, what would I have thought if anyone told me someday I’d marry a look-alike for Joan Bennett?_

His glamorous, gorgeous wife reached up to touch his face.  Her hand lightly stroked his cheek and his beard, and she whispered, “Bill.  Thank you.”

He smiled a little at that.  “Anytime, Liz,” he said quietly.  “Anytime.”

She looked as regal as ever.  But there was impishness in her answering smile as she said, “They do say there is no time like the present.”

His body told him he had infinitely more important things to accomplish than speaking.  But he still needed to force some of what he felt into words.

“I love you, Liz,” he managed.  His voice was rough with intensity.  “I love you more than anything on this earth.  More than my life.”

_And my life,_ thought Bill Malloy, _is wonderful._

_So there’s a sobbing ghost, or two, or three, or a hundred, in the great house of Collinwood._

_Or else my new nephew-by-marriage has a career ahead of him doing sound effects for horror movies._

_Or else I’m on track to become as crazy as Matthew Morgan._

_So some maniac out there somewhere kidnapped and murdered sweet little Maggie Evans, and left her father and Joe Haskell emotionally broken men.  So the police still haven’t caught whoever attacked Maggie and all those other women on the docks.  So we still don’t know why the hell the farmers keep finding their livestock drained of blood._

_Right now, in this room, in this bed, life is wonderful._

           

           


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When in doubt, hold a seance.

** Chapter Two **

 

_My name is Bill Malloy._

_All hell is breaking loose again in the great house of Collinwood.  A boy who sees ghosts has been warned that the living are threatened by the dead.  The adults around him make a desperate gamble in search of answers.  That gamble will send one man on a journey into darkness and terror._

Bill Malloy was at his desk, looking over the week’s reports, when the telephone rang.

“Bill,” came Liz’s urgent tones.  “I need you here now.”

His heart sank.  He asked, “You told Vicki the news about Burke?”

Elizabeth Collins Malloy sighed.  “Yes.  She’s terribly upset, of course.  But she took it as well as could be expected – perhaps better than she should.  She still doesn’t fully accept that it’s true.  When she finally does … Bill, when she can’t deny it any more, I hate to think of what it’s going to do to her.”

“I know.  So do I.”  For a moment Bill closed his eyes, with a brief, wordless prayer for Burke Devlin, wherever his soul might be.

“But that’s not why I called you,” Liz hurried on.  “It’s David.  He says Sarah came to see him in his room.  Apparently something she said to him frightened him terribly.  I don’t know what we can do to help him.”

Bill said, “I’m coming home.”

He thrust the reports into their file.  After glancing around to confirm that his office did not look disreputable, he grabbed his overcoat off the coat rack and headed out the door. 

As usual, Bill had worked a bit late into the evening.  Somebody needed to do it, since his brother-in-law Roger tended to put in the equivalent of one good day’s work per month.  There were no other Collins Enterprises employees still at their desks for him to call “good night” to as he left.

The November night air harried him more viciously than usual as he strode down the street to his car.  He thought, _Feels like a Nor’easter’s blowing in tonight._   He wouldn’t be surprised if it dumped a good few inches of snow on Collinsport before morning.  But for now, it was just spitting some rain.  On top of the hill, the weather would probably work itself up into a classic Collinwood thunderstorm.

As far as Bill was concerned, those old Collinses had showed more pride than meteorological sense when they planted their grand mansion smack on the top of Widow’s Hill.  At least at the Old House, lower down the slope, the hill provided some shelter from the weather.  But Collinwood perched right at the crest of the hill like a giant, house-shaped lightening rod.  Jeremiah Collins, or whoever had built the place, had managed to locate his castle at the center of a freak wind tunnel.  It attracted every inclement weather front out of Canada or the sea, and set them to fighting each other.  There were days when it was blue skied and sunny down in Collinsport, and they still had thunder rumbling around them up at Collinwood.

As Bill started his car, he regretfully admitted to himself that Roger Collins probably had a point.  It was just about time for Bill to invest in a new car.  His dear old Chevy 150, that he’d bought when he first got a big enough raise from Collins Enterprises to afford his own car, was not the most practical vehicle for a man who regularly made the commute between Collinwood and Collinsport.  The steep road gave her engine fifty fits.  And the last time he’d driven home in a storm, he’d had to stop to fix the windshield wipers partway up the hill.  Still, Bill knew he would probably keep on driving the old girl as long as she could manage forward locomotion – partly from loyalty, and partly for the fun of scandalizing Roger Collins.  Bill called the car “Gracie.”   Dear Roger called her “the old grey mare,” or, more frequently, “that ludicrous rust bucket.”

The lowering weather made Bill’s hometown look even more of a ghost town than usual.  _Some things never change_ , he thought, as he drove along the rain-slicked streets.  As far back as he could remember, every night about 5:00 Collinsport shut up tight as a tick.  He remembered his dad saying that the only reason Collinsport’s residents didn’t roll up their sidewalks each night, was because they’d have to be outside to do it.  That would interfere with the town looking sufficiently deserted.

For anyone not sensible enough to be snugly tucked away in their homes after 5:00 rolled around, all the life, light and companionship Collinsport had to offer would be found in the two havens of what passed for nightlife: the Blue Whale and the Collinsport Inn Café.  In Collinsport’s case, “life, light and companionship” took the form of the daily gossip report and a wicked good chowder at the inn, while the Blue Whale boasted a deadpan bartender and the usual interminable same three songs on the jukebox. 

As he drove past the inn, Bill realized he didn’t even remember the last time he’d stopped in at either of the town’s two hotspots.  Marriage to the matriarch of the Collins clan didn’t leave much time free for gossip, chowder, or monosyllabic chats with Bob the bartender.

Waiting for the light to change at Collinsport’s one stoplight, he checked his overcoat pocket for what had to be the thirtieth time.  Just as on the other twenty-nine occasions, his present for Liz was still in there.  It was an antique ring she’d admired when they were in Bangor a few Saturdays ago.  His plan was to give it to her for their three-month anniversary tomorrow.  He had also planned to take her out to dinner, but Lord knew if that would be happening now.  They might be too deep in one or more of the family’s perpetual crises.  He might have to content himself with just leaving the ring box on his pillow tomorrow morning, for Liz to find when she woke up.

At the sedate pace which was all Gracie could manage up the hill, Bill had no need to slow down at the notorious curve in the road that he now tended to think of as “Bleeder Valve Bend.”  Tonight, he felt a new, bitter poignancy in remembering Roger’s near-fatal wreck at this spot, nearly a year ago. 

In that wreck, Bill and Roger’s first suspect had been Burke Devlin.  Ex-Collins employee, local boy made good, back in town to avenge the five-year prison term he owed to Roger Collins.  Burke Devlin who was now confirmed dead in a Brazilian plane crash, and who left a fiancée in Collinwood who hadn’t yet accepted that he was truly gone. 

Another minute’s drive past Bleeder Valve Bend, Bill reached the top of the hill.  Home, sweet home. 

Roger was obviously home already.  His beloved convertible sat in the garage, in all its gleaming glory.  As usual, Bill parked Gracie next to Roger’s baby, for the pleasure of imagining how the sight would offend his brother-in-law’s artistic sensibilities.

“’Night, Gracie,” muttered Bill.  He picked up the shopping bag from the passenger seat, gave Gracie’s hood a good night pat, and hurried through the rain across the courtyard to Collinwood’s front door. 

It was always a relief to him that he didn’t have to knock at the door anymore.  More than half the time, the denizens of the place were too caught up in their traumas to bother themselves with opening it.  He let himself in and was hanging up his coat in the entryway, when he was greeted with a perky, “Hi, Bill!  How’s my favorite step-dad tonight?”      

“I’m not certain yet, Princess.”  He walked over to where Carolyn sat, swinging her legs, on the table in the foyer.  He put down his shopping bag beside her.  “That’s what I’m here to find out.  Is your mother in the drawing room?”

Carolyn rolled her eyes and gave her Betty Boop pout.  “No; in the study.  She and Uncle Roger and Cousin Barnabas are having a Very Important Conversation.  Oh, and Miss Hoffman, too.  Can’t forget her.  What’s in the bag?” his stepdaughter continued breezily.  “Anything for me?”

“Sorry.  A couple of things I picked up for David.”  As he said it, Bill hoped he hadn’t glowered too noticeably at her news that their permanent summer visitor Cousin Barnabas from England was among the conversationalists in the study.

“Oh,” said Carolyn, with an exaggerated sigh.  “Well, that won’t do any good.  Not unless it’s a ouija board or a deck of tarot cards.”  Now her expression became more of a conspiratorial smirk.  She cast a glance toward the closed study door.  “Or maybe you’d do better to bring those to them, in there.”

Liz’s phone call, and the hints Carolyn was dropping like lead weights, ought to send him charging into the study.  But there was something off about his stepdaughter’s behavior tonight.  He thought it was the same “something” that he’d been noticing for weeks.  If he didn’t try to talk with her about it now, who knew when he would have another chance.

Bill proposed, “Let’s have our own Very Important Conversation out here.”  Carolyn widened her eyes at him, and Bill plowed on. 

“You tell me, Princess: are you all right?  Go ahead and laugh at me, but I mean it.  You’ve seemed … different recently.  Preoccupied, I guess.  Distant.  You’ll stop like you’ve been frozen, right in the middle of something else, and you’ll stand there like you’re listening to something.  Your eyes get ... glassy.  And then there’s the long walks you take in the middle of the night.”

Carolyn was still giving him that innocent look.  He told himself this wouldn’t get easier, the longer he put off asking it.  “I’ve got to ask you, Princess.  Are you doing some kind of drugs?”

She stared at him, all wide-eyed amazement.  Then she broke into a bright little wind chime of a laugh.  “Oh, Bill!” Carolyn exclaimed.  She sprang down from the table to take his hands in hers, and she planted a kiss on his beard.  “Do you know that you’re the sweetest stepfather in the world?”

Looking as implacable as he could manage, Bill extricated his hands.  “Not sweet enough to let you get around me that easily.  Maybe your mother hasn’t been out in the world enough lately to know to ask that question.  So that’s what I’m here for.  You got an answer for me?”

“Oh, Bill,” Carolyn said again, this time in a sigh.  She boosted herself back up on the table.  Looking put out at having to talk about anything seriously, she started fiddling with the gauzy scarf she wore tied around her neck.

“No, sir,” she told him.  The meekness of her voice sounded only slightly exaggerated.  “I’m not doing any drugs.  I’ve only tried a few, here and there, nothing serious.  And nothing recently.  Oh, I’ve smoked pot a few times.  But I haven’t even touched that for months, now.”  She grinned suddenly and added, “Not since Buzz received his marching orders.”

Bill was not certain this was the most reassuring of answers.  But he supposed he would have to take her word for it.  “So what’s bothering you then, Princess?” he demanded.  “It’s got to be something beyond your usual beef about being a member of the Addams Family.”

Carolyn laughed again, gave him her most charming look, and asked, “Have I ever told you how glad I am you married Mother?  All right, all right!  You don’t have to glare at me like that!  I’ll tell you the truth,” she went on.  For once her sigh and the bleak expression on her face seemed like they might be genuine.  “I’m having men trouble.”

She had made that statement as though it should halt all further questioning.  _Maybe it should,_ Bill thought, _but I’m past letting myself get side-tracked._   “What sort of men trouble?”

“Oh, you know the sort of thing,” she answered, twisting the end of her scarf.  “Or maybe you don’t.  Trying to get the right man to pay attention to me.  Trying to get the wrong man to stop paying attention to me.  The usual.”

“All right, Princess.”  He knew she could very well still be feeding him a line.  But there was also the conference in the study that he needed to join in on.  “Is there anything the sweetest stepfather in the world can do to help?  You want me to give the wrong man a kick away from you, and the right one a kick toward you?”

“Maybe,” she said, with another pretty little sigh.  “I’ll let you know as soon as I figure out who’s the wrong one and who’s the right one!”

He jerked his thumb toward the study door.  “Were you asked to leave that conversation, or did you walk out on it?”

“I walked out,” she declared.  “You won’t like it, either.  They’re planning another séance.”

She was right.  He didn’t like it.  He was trying not to glower as he walked in to join the conversation.

“Bill!” Liz exclaimed, holding out one hand to him.  “At last!”

He took the time to kiss Liz properly, because he was damned if he was going to just give his wife a peck on the cheek on the night before their three-month anniversary.  Roger, Miss Hoffman and Barnabas, looking important and conspiratorial, could just hold their horses a few moments before getting back to their plotting.

Well, Roger and Miss Hoffman looked conspiratorial.  Barnabas, Bill noticed when he nodded a greeting to the man, had something of a look of tolerant disdain.  One might have thought the others were children, playing a game he found foolish but amusing.

Liz certainly didn’t resist Bill’s kiss, but her concerned expression confirmed that they probably wouldn’t do much in the way of anniversary celebrations.

“What’s going on?” Bill demanded, turning to face the others with his arm around Liz’s waist.  “Carolyn says you’re planning a séance.”

“That’s right, Bill,” answered Roger.  “Apparently David has seen his little friend Sarah again, and she said something that frightened him.  I would have thought this was Dr. Fisher’s territory, but our lovely houseguest – ” this he said with a nod toward Miss Hoffman – “insists that she has seen Sarah, too.  So in hopes of confirming whether there really is a ghost at work, Miss Hoffman suggested we hold a séance to try and contact her.”

“I am not in favor of the idea myself, Mr. Malloy,” put in Barnabas Collins, presumably in answer to Bill’s darkening scowl.  “I respect my ancestors’ privacy as much as I hope that they would respect mine.  I would hate to think they were being disturbed on a mere whim.”    

“It is not a whim, Barnabas,” Julia Hoffman hissed, with a fierceness that made Bill wonder if there’d been a falling-out between the genealogist and her favorite research informant.  “If there’s even a chance that Sarah’s messages to David are real, then we owe it to him _and_ to her to find out what they mean.  I’m surprised you would even think of sitting idly by when there’s a chance that this little girl’s spirit has a warning she is desperate to communicate with us.”

Cousin Barnabas looked on the verge of some retort.  Liz intervened with, “Really, Barnabas, I don’t see how it can hurt to try this.  Dr. Fisher won’t be able to get here until tomorrow, anyway.  We can make the attempt tonight.  If we do contact Sarah and learn something from her, good.  If we learn nothing, at least we will know we made every effort we could to help.”

“I would never wish to stand in the way of helping David,” said Barnabas, with a bow and a smile.  “I only hope the ghosts have a good supply of umbrellas and raincoats.”

Roger chuckled urbanely at that, and engaged in several other séance jokes with Barnabas while escorting his cousin to the study door.

“Bill,” Liz said, with a frowning sigh.  “I hope you’re not really angry about this.”

If he was, Bill knew, it would make no difference.  She would be sorry for upsetting her husband.  But she would do what she thought best, regardless.  Which, of course, was one of the reasons he loved her.

“I’m not angry,” Bill said heavily.  “I just wish we knew a better way to help David than holding hands and staring into candles.”

With a last call of “good night” to Barnabas, Roger re-joined them.  Bill looked around at the three of them and asked, “What time are we starting this shindig?”

“Around 10:00, I thought,” suggested Roger.  “That will give all of us time to have some supper.  Who knows but that it might disrupt one’s concentration, trying to contact the spirits on an empty stomach.”

Bill turned to his wife.  “I’d like to go up and check in on David,” he said.  “And maybe Vicki, if she’s up to seeing anyone.  Then I’ll come back down and eat with you, if you’re willing to wait.”   

Liz smiled sadly and gave him a squeeze around his waist.  “Of course I’m willing to wait.  Ask Vicki if she wants us to send anything up to her.”

“Oh, and Bill,” added Roger.  “Don’t mention this séance business to David, all right?  It could only upset him.”

Bill nodded, headed back to the foyer and picked up the bag for David.  Carolyn was nowhere to be seen.  Hanging around in the foyer looking breezy and cynical presumably lost its charm, without an audience.

Upstairs at David’s door, Bill knocked and asked, “You in there, David?  It’s Bill.”

“Come in, I guess,” the boy’s voice came dully back.

The ten-year-old was lying on his neatly-made bed, fully dressed and staring up at the ceiling.  Regretfully Bill thought this was what David was always doing, whenever Bill had the chance to see him these days.

“How was Boston?” Bill inquired.

“Fine.”

Bill put down the paper bag on David’s desk.  He pulled out the desk chair and sat down.

“Your aunt mentioned to me you’ve spoken with Sarah again.”

David looked toward him, gaze flat and dispirited.  “You don’t believe I see Sarah.  No more than anybody else does.”

Helplessly Bill began, “It’s not that I don’t believe you …”

Suddenly David sat up.  Staring wildly at his uncle, he said in almost a yell, “I don’t want you to believe me!  Dr. Woodard and Burke believed me!  And now they’re both dead!”

_Where the hell did that come from?_ Bill wondered.  He attempted, “You didn’t cause what happened to them.  It was a heart attack and an accident.  Not anyone’s fault.  We’re all grieving, but you have to understand that you can’t blame yourself.  You didn’t do anything to hurt them.  You or Sarah.”

The boy lay back down.  “Yeah,” he said, his voice hopeless once again.  “Not anyone’s fault.”

Bill tried again with, “Did you eat supper already?”

“Yeah.  A little.  I’m not very hungry.”

Holding back a sigh, Bill opened the shopping bag and took out its contents: three automotive magazines and a remote-control car.  “I picked these up in town for you,” he said, trying not to be depressed at the knowledge that his attempts were all-but doomed to failure.  “This car was under the tree in the ‘Winter Wonderland’ Christmas display in the pharmacy window.  I guess they haven’t noticed that it isn’t even Thanksgiving yet.”

There was a flicker of interest in David’s gaze as he watched Bill pick up the toy car.  Then he said, “Buying presents for people doesn’t help.  Nothing helps.”

_Out of the mouths of babes,_ Bill thought.  “I know,” he said, standing up.  “Sometimes nothing does help.”  He put down the car and patted the little stack of magazines next to it.  “One of these has some articles in it about restoring Model Ts.  I thought maybe this weekend you and I could spend some time working on your grandfather’s car.  Maybe we can even get it up and running.  If we do, we’ll take it out for a spin.  That should annoy your father, having a car even slower than mine putting around up here.”

Miraculously, that did call forth a faint smile from David.  “Yeah.  Maybe.”  Very quietly he added, “Thanks, Uncle Bill.”

“Good night, David.”

If the visit to David had been depressing, he was _really_ not looking forward to visiting Victoria Winters. 

_I missed my calling when I went into the fishing industry,_ Bill told himself ruefully.  _I should have been a chaplain, instead._ Though he had his doubts that his parishioners were being much helped by his avuncular advice and his shoulder-to-cry-on. 

He tried to knock quietly enough at her door not to disturb her, if she happened to be asleep.  But he knew there was probably not even one chance in a hundred that Vicki would be sleeping.

Sure enough, he heard her call, “Who is it?”

“Bill Malloy.  I just wanted to check if – if you’d like to talk with anyone.”

“Come in.”

Her voice sounded calm, anyway; not as though she’d been crying.  Bill supposed that was probably not a good sign.

Vicki Winters was sitting at her desk, in the middle of writing what looked like a many-page letter.  As Bill sat down on the edge of her bed, she gave him a heart-wrenchingly melancholy smile.

“I’m writing to Burke,” Vicki told him.  “So I know that I won’t forget … all the things I want to tell him, when I see him again.”

Bill had no idea what to say.  Fortunately Vicki did not seem to expect him to.  She murmured, as if talking to herself, “Everyone thinks I’m foolish, don’t they.  They think I’m lying to myself.  I know it must be hard to stay patient with me.  You have every right to be angry.  You’ve all been so patient, and I keep refusing to accept … what every rational person knows has to be true.”

“We’re not angry with you,” Bill told her forcefully.  “We never could be.”

She smiled again.  Her face made him think of the grieving Madonna.  She said, “I can’t give up on him.  I can’t.  I know everyone thinks I should, but … I just can’t give up hope.”

“Then don’t,” he said.  “Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks.  I just wanted to stop by and tell you that … If you want to talk about Burke sometime, I want to talk about him, too.”

Thank you, Bill,” Vicki whispered.  “Maybe someday I will.”

_Where is Burke going to be buried?_ Bill wondered.  _Will they bury him in Brazil, or will they send the remains back here?_

Or maybe, instead, Burke would want to be cremated, and have his ashes scattered at sea.  It seemed fitting for him.  Bill wondered if Burke had left any instructions about it.  Presumably, with a fortune such as Burke had built up out of nothing, he had to have left a will.  Bill didn’t know whether Burke was more likely to want his remains forever linked with Collinsport, or whether he wouldn’t want the place to have a claim on so much as one ash of him.

_Will we ever be able to hold a memorial for him?  Or will we have to keep silent forever, because saying we believe he’s dead will be too much for Vicki?_

One thing was certain; Bill and Sam Evans needed to hold their own, very alcohol-sodden wake for Burke some night at the Blue Whale.  Since at least, thank God, Maggie Evans had come home alive, and Sam was apparently no longer in quite so much danger of disappearing into a bottle and never crawling out of it again. 

“From the sublime to the mundane,” said Bill, “Liz asked me to check if you want supper sent up to you.”

“No, thank you.  I’ll come down soon and have some.”

He stood up, and then it occurred to him to ask, “Has anyone mentioned this séance to you?”

“Séance?”

“Roger, Miss Hoffman and Liz are planning to hold a séance at 10:00 tonight.”

Vicki gasped and sprang to her feet, with a look close to terror.  She asked desperately, “To contact Burke?”

Bill hurried to the girl and grasped her shoulder.  “No.  No.  Not him.  To try and contact Sarah.  Miss Hoffman thinks she may have seen Sarah’s ghost, too.  They want to see if there’s any way they can speak with Sarah, and if that can somehow help David.”

“Oh,” Vicki breathed, sinking back down into her chair.  Bill noticed that her hands were trembling.  “Ten o’clock?” she asked distantly.  “I should come and help.”

“You don’t have to,” he assured her.  “I know the last séance wasn’t easy on you.  Nobody’s going blame you if you want to sit this one out.”

“No,” she murmured.  “I’ll come.  I want to do what I can to help.”

Heading back downstairs, Bill thought it might be a blessing if Burke _did_ speak to Vicki in the séance tonight.  Maybe there was no other way she would ever face that he was dead.

Not that Bill was even half certain if he actually believed in these things.

_Something_ had spoken through Vicki at the last séance, certainly, a couple of months ago at Cousin Barnabas’ remarkably uncomfortable costume party.  But had that really been Josette Collins, as Roger and some of the others claimed to believe?  Or was her reliving of a suicide leap from Widow’s Hill simply a hash of family legends and Vicki’s subconscious?

Bill thought, _At least we don’t have to be in costume for this séance._

Not that he’d minded, a couple of weeks after his wedding, the chance to see his wife wear a gown that made her look like the Empress of Russia.  He _had_ minded having to stand around all evening wearing a scratchy and moth-eaten Revolutionary War uniform.  And Roger’s brilliant idea to contact the Collins ancestors hadn’t improved the evening any.

He found Liz at the piano in the drawing room, playing a Chopin nocturne.  They walked arm-in-arm to the breakfast room together, where they shared a quick dinner of Mrs. Johnson’s cream of mushroom chicken and au gratin potatoes, left warming for them in the oven.

As they ate, Liz told him more of the disturbing message David claimed to have received from Sarah.

“He says Sarah told him that the dead are angry, and want to destroy someone here at Collinwood.  When he asked her to tell him _who_ would be destroyed, she disappeared.”

“The dead want to destroy someone?  What a danged strange thing to say.”

Liz nodded.  “It’s that very strangeness that makes me think he may be telling the truth.”

Bill thought that strangeness, by itself, was no guarantee David hadn’t made the story up.  He kept that thought to himself.

By the time 10:00 rolled around, the Collinwood thunderstorm had started up in full force.  Their weather was apparently going out of its way to provide them with suitable background noises.

Roger Collins was looking ineffectually for candles.  Liz went to fetch them.  Bill thought it odd that a man who’d grown up in this house wouldn’t know where candles were stored – particularly since the power seemed to go out one thunderstorm out of every ten.  But perhaps Mrs. Johnson had re-arranged things since beginning to work here as housekeeper.

Once the candles were discovered, a sizeable party assembled in the drawing room.  They stood awkwardly around the eight-sided Colonial table that Bill had helped Roger carry to the center of the room. 

_The gang’s all here,_ Bill thought.  One or the other of them had to keep hurrying off to get more chairs, when yet another séance participant arrived. 

Vicki Winters was there, looking wan but calm.  Carolyn was there, not trying very hard to keep the smirk off her face.

Vicki asked, “Six chairs, is that right?’

Miss Hoffman was busy at the candelabra she had placed on a tall, elaborate plant stand, where its three candles would shed light over the table.  “Yes,” she answered, when the third candle was lit.  “Close enough so we can touch hands.”

The historian walked over to light the final candle, on the table.  As she did so, Roger asked her, “Julia, have you ever been to a séance?”

“Yes,” she said brusquely.  “One.”

“Good, then help me with this one, would you?  I’m at my worst with ritual.”

Bill wondered if anyone else found that comment as funny as he did.  Considering the obvious relish with which Roger had led their previous séance, this claim of his had to be false modesty.  Presumably he was trying to flatter their houseguest by making her feel indispensable to this process.

Liz had gone out a moment before, to answer a knock at the front door.  Now she returned with, of all people, Cousin Barnabas Collins.  She announced graciously, “Barnabas has decided to join us.”

“If no one minds,” Barnabas added, with one of his courtly little bows.

_Would it make any difference if we did?_ wondered Bill.

For his part, Roger said, “Well, I’m delighted.  I thought you were being rather stuffy.”

“Oh, I don’t mind being thought that,” the English cousin answered, all charm.  “But I wouldn’t want anyone to doubt my concern for David.”

Vicki Winters said quietly, “I’ll get one more chair.”

“Oh, no,” smoothly interjected Barnabas, “allow me.”

So now there were seven of them, standing amid the slightly-mismatched collection of antique chairs.

Roger remembered, “There’s one other thing.  I want the family history here on the table, open to her picture.  If she does appear, I want to see with my own eyes that it’s actually Sarah Collins.”

“I’ll get it,” Vicki offered.  The haste with which she left, made Bill wonder if she was rethinking her decision to take part in the séance.

Meanwhile, Miss Hoffman was saying dryly, “I think actual physical appearances are relatively rare.”

“Is there any order in which we sit?” Barnabas Collins asked.  “Is it like a dinner party?  Man, woman, man, and so forth?”

Roger answered airily, “Well, if it’s so, we’re in trouble.”

Miss Hoffman cast Barnabas an icy look.  “Etiquette is not the important thing,” she lectured.  “Attitude is.  If anyone doesn’t believe, then he or she may stop the person we’re contacting.”

“I wouldn’t want that, Miss Hoffman,” returned Barnabas.  “I shall suppress my natural levity.”

_What the hell part is this character playing?_ Bill asked himself.  _If he’s so opposed to this séance, why is he even here?_

_Does the poor bastard really have such a lonely life that he can’t stay away from Collinwood even when he thinks we’re up to something  pathetic?_

Miss Hoffman’s point about “attitude,” however, did raise another question.

“Would you like me to leave?” Bill asked the others.  “I can’t claim I’m a believer.  I’m not certain this _won’t_ work, but I admit I’ll be surprised if it does.”

Their houseguest studied him with a narrow-eyed glare.  Then she decided, “Your concern for David is genuine.  And your desire for the truth.  The spirits should recognize that, and respect you for it.”

_That’s nice of the spirits,_ Bill thought.

Vicki Winters returned with the massive Collins tome in her arms.  “Here it is,” she reported, setting it down in the middle of the table.   “It’s open to the page.”

For a few moments they all clustered in closely together, staring at the picture in the book.  Staring at a painting of a solemn-faced girl with long, dark hair, in a stiff-looking bonnet and dress.

Liz urged, her voice tense, “Let’s not wait any longer.”

“If everyone will just sit,” said Roger, the master of ceremonies.  There was some milling around while everyone worked out where to place themselves.  Cousin Barnabas, as ever attentive to all lovely young ladies, sat between Vicki and Carolyn.  Roger chose the place at Carolyn’s other side.  His sister sat next to him.  Bill sat between Liz and Miss Hoffman, more-or-less across the table from Vicki. 

Vicki smiled faintly at Bill when she noticed him looking at her.  But her smile couldn’t camouflage the fear in her eyes. 

Bill held back a sigh. 

_The poor kid has got to be terrified.  She can keep on insisting that Burke’s still alive.  But how can she help being afraid he’s going to speak to her tonight?_

_If he does speak to her, she’ll know there’s no hope left._  

“Now …” Roger began.  He interrupted himself with, “Oh, I’d better get the door.  And the light.”

With the electric light turned off, the drawing room seemed to gain a life of its own.  The flickering candlelight cast shadows that rose and fell, as though the walls and the furniture were breathing.

“Now,” Roger said again, as he took his seat, “the important thing is that we all concentrate on Sarah Collins.” 

“You’ve all seen her picture,” added Miss Hoffman.  “Now try to remember it in your minds.”

Next Roger instructed, “No matter what, no one interrupt.  Even if you want to.”  

The ease with which Roger and Miss Hoffman traded séance-leading duties back and forth, suddenly reminded Bill of how Huey, Dewey and Louie share each other’s sentences. 

_Huey, Dewey and Louie, minus one duck._

_Gee, Unca Donald, let’s have a séance._

_Come along, now, Bill_ , he ordered himself.  _Suppress your natural levity._

Miss Hoffman was up to bat next.  “Our hands must touch so that we form an unbroken circle,” she told them in schoolteacherish tones.  One of her pupils was clearly disappointing her.  “Barnabas,” she observed, her voice suddenly scathing.  “Your hand’s not touching Carolyn’s.”

“I’m sorry,” the cousin from England murmured.  Obediently he moved his hand to the required place.

“The circle must never be broken,” Miss Hoffman reiterated.  “Now, we must clear our minds of everything except Sarah.”

The Collins history book was lying right in front of Bill.  He decided not to try recreating the girl’s face in his mind.  Instead he kept staring at her portrait. 

In the warmth of the candlelight, the antique image seemed almost alive. 

Now Roger went into full séance mode.  He closed his eyes and lifted his face, to address the air above them.

“Sarah,” he intoned.  “Sarah Collins.  We are calling you.  Come to us, Sarah.” 

They all sat, in expectant or embarrassed silence.

Roger seemed undaunted by the lack of immediate response.  “We need you, Sarah.  We want you to help us with David.  Your friend!  David!  Help us, Sarah.  Make a sign if you hear us.”

And there was a sign.

Just as if an unseen person had blown on them, all three of the candles in the candelabra suddenly went out.

Gasps and half exclamations sounded around the table.  Only the candle at the center of the table still glimmered in the dark.

From all around them – just like the crying Bill had heard on the morning after the wedding – came the thin, wavering notes of a flute. 

Someone was playing a tune that Bill recognized.  It was an old nursery rhyme, “London Bridge is Falling Down.”

They heard only a line or two, before the song faded to nothing. 

Bill felt like a trail of ice water had trickled down his spine.  His arm and Liz’s were touching, not just their little fingers, and he felt his wife’s arm trembling.

“Sarah!”  Roger soldiered on, with new urgency.  “Sarah, if you are in this room, let us see you.  If you will not let us see you, then speak to us.  Speak!”

For another moment nothing answered.

Eyes closed, face blank, Carolyn Stoddard flung back her head.  She moaned like someone crying in their sleep.  In a childish whimper she protested, “No.  No.”

“Carolyn,” Barnabas began in concern.  He was immediately “shushed” by someone, probably Miss Hoffman.

Roger said helpfully, “She’s going into the trance.”  Now on familiar territory, he went on, “Speak to us, Sarah.  Through Carolyn.  Speak to us. We are your friends.”

The little-girl whine came again.  “You wake me.”

_She’s faking it,_ Bill thought. 

Why he should be so sure of that, he didn’t know.  It wasn’t like he was an expert on séances.  Maybe it was only because Carolyn sounded different than Vicki had, in the séance at Barnabas’ costume party.

But Sarah was a different person than Josette.  Why shouldn’t she sound different?

Apparently Roger had no concern about the speaker’s identity.  He insisted, “Sarah, tell us about David.  Your friend David.”

Carolyn moaned and shook her head, as though managing the words only at the cost of pain.  She murmured, “I have no friend.”

Finally Roger was starting to sound nonplussed.  He argued, with a plaintive note to his voice, “But you come to David.”

Carolyn, or whatever was speaking, seemed to be growing more agitated.  “No.  I don’t.  No!  Let me go back,” she begged.  “I – I don’t like it here!  _I have no friend named David_.”

Beside him, Bill heard Liz gasp.

She was staring across the table from them, at Victoria Winters.  Bill followed her gaze.

Like Carolyn’s, Vicki’s eyes were shut.  She did not fling back her head, or mimic Carolyn’s sleepy whimpering.  Instead she spoke out in clear, forthright tones, “She lies.  David is my friend.  I play with him.”

And suddenly her eyes opened.  Looking at all of them with an expression of perfect calm, she somehow gave the impression of not being Vicki Winters at all. 

She said, “I am Sarah Collins.”

Bill heard his wife murmur something under her breath.  He wished he could hold her hand properly, instead of being stuck with this ridiculous fingertip-touching.

“She tells lies,” the Sarah who was Vicki stated once more.  “David is my friend.”

“No,” Carolyn moaned.

“She does not want him to be.  But he is.”

“She’s not Sarah!”

_That_ was Carolyn, all right.  Whatever game she’d been up to, was played and lost.

“Carolyn,” Liz said warningly.

“I am,” Vicki’s Sarah declared.  “I will never, ever let any of you see me again.  I came to _her_.  She saw me.  She tells lies.”

Carolyn leapt up, somehow without breaking the famous circle.  “No!”

“Carolyn,” said her mother, in her voice of genteel maternal frustration.  “Sit down and be quiet.”

And then something different happened.  Vicki’s Sarah seemed to forget where, or when, she was. 

“Why is my new governess late?  I drew a picture of how she is to look.  She will be that pretty.  See?  Where is she?”

Valiantly Roger tried to get this train back on the track.  “Sarah,” he insisted, “we want to know about David.  Why do you come to David?”

For a moment, she almost answered him.  “To tell … Let me go to the gate.  Please!  I’ll hear the carriage there.” 

“Sarah!” Roger pleaded.  “Tell us – about David.”

“Barnabas will take me to the gate.”

As though galvanized by the sound of his own name, Cousin Barnabas protested, “This is ridiculous.  Cruel.”

“Barnabas,” Vicki, or Sarah, went on, “when you marry Josette, will you still love me?  Will you come and see me at the new house?”

“Sarah,” poor Roger tried again, “ _you_ come to the new house to see David.  Why?”

This time, at least, she answered.  “To tell him.”

“Tell _us_.  Why?’

Like Carolyn’s Sarah before her, Vicki’s Sarah seemed to be growing more troubled.  She murmured, “To tell him the story.  The story … how it all began.  How …””

“Tell us now.”

And then she was off, into a conversation Roger wasn’t part of.  “No!  I won’t go to bed until my new governess comes.  You said that I could stay up to see her.” 

_Something worse is happening,_ Bill thought.  _Something more is going on than a child who won’t go to bed._

Fear was growing in Vicki’s face.  “Don’t take the candle,” she begged.  “I won’t go to sleep.  Don’t take the light!  _Don’t!_ ” 

The last candle blew out.

In the darkness, Vicki screamed.

Bill forgot utterly about not breaking the circle.  He jumped to his feet and reached across the table toward Vicki, to support her if she started to collapse.

He put one hand down on the Collins family history, lying open to the portrait of Sarah.

As though lightening had struck, the darkness vanished in a white blaze of light.

************************************************************************************************************************ 

“Bill!” Liz cried out, as his hand broke contact with hers.  She felt him jump up, and she reached out for him in the dark, to try and hold him back.

Something changed.  She thought Bill must have fallen.  There was a heavy thud as if he had suddenly lost consciousness and plummeted onto the table.

“Bill!” she cried again.  She sprang up and reached for him.

At the first contact, she flinched back in horror.

_It isn’t Bill._

Whoever was lying there, was wearing something different.  She had touched some thick, heavy fabric, as of a coat or a cloak.  And there was a new, strange smell in the air around them.  A thick, earthy odor that she thought might come from a person who had not showered or bathed in months. 

People were exclaiming things all around her.  She heard Miss Hoffman call out, “Someone – someone turn on the light.”

Liz didn’t see who obeyed that order.  When the lights came on, she could not take her eyes from the man who lay slumped across the table beside her.

She had never seen him before. 

The garment she’d touched in the darkness turned out to be a brown overcoat with a cape-like attachment, like a far more battered version of Barnabas’ favorite coat.  The man’s longish, dirty brown hair was tied back with a black ribbon.  It was a simple thing, but somehow Liz thought it looked more feminine than anything a man should use in his hair.  The side of his face that she could see was coated in reddish-brown dirt, as if he had been caught in a dust storm.  A trickle of blood seeped out from his hair line.

“My God!” exclaimed Roger.  “Who is this man?”

“I don’t understand,” Vicki was saying desperately.  “What’s happened?  What’s happened?”

“Who is he?” came Carolyn’s voice.  “How could he have gotten in here?”

In low, urgent tones, Barnabas inquired, “He is injured, Julia?”

“Yes.” 

Suddenly Miss Hoffman the genealogist was sounding and acting incongruously like a doctor.  She put her hand to a few spots on the man’s head, with a light, clinical touch.  Briefly she separated his eyelids, to examine the eye that was not pressed against the tabletop.  Briefly she also examined his neck, what little of it she could access around the high collar of the man’s coat.

“He has some contusions along with that cut on his head,” their houseguest reported.  “I can’t tell – it’s impossible to tell the extent of his injuries without a proper medical examination.  I’m afraid he may have some spinal injury.  We can’t risk moving him ourselves.  We’ll have to call for an ambulance.” 

Liz heard herself say, in a distant voice that didn’t seem to be hers, “Bill’s gone.”

“He can’t be,” Roger stated.  He sounded as though the concept offended him.  “He has to be around here somewhere.  Bill?” Roger raised his voice to call.  “Bill, where are you?”

“Where is he?” Carolyn asked wildly.  Her voice was rapidly rising into hysteria.  “He can’t have left the room.  The lights weren’t out long enough.  We would have seen him.  Where did he go?  Where’s Bill, Mother?  Mother, where is he?”

“No one is to move this man,” ordered Julia Hoffman.  “I’m going to telephone the ambulance.”

The last thing Elizabeth Collins Malloy heard before she began to scream was her brother Roger’s voice. 

“But I don’t understand,” protested Roger Collins.  “Where is Bill Malloy?”


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bill deals with the jetlag of time travel. Features Bill Malloy, Phyllis Wick, Jeremiah Collins, Barnabas Collins, Sarah Collins and Riggs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter of Bill Malloy’s adventures became a lot longer than I’d imagined it would. And the night isn’t even over for him yet! 
> 
> The lyrics to “What Do You Do with the Drunken Sailor” that Bill sings in this chapter (courtesy of the Wikipedia article on the song!) are slightly different from those sung by Burke and Sam while they are mourning for Bill in the Blue Whale in Episode 85 of DS. I wanted Bill to be singing an old version of the song, on the theory that he would have heard it from the old sailors around Collinsport while he was growing up. So I just have to assume that Burke and Sam (particularly being as many sheets to the wind as they were at the time!) didn’t quite remember the song precisely as Bill Malloy sang it.

**Chapter Three**

 

_My name is Bill Malloy._

_There are nights when time seems to stand still at the great house of Collinwood.  On this night, one man has transcended the barriers of time.  He begins a mysterious journey in the past, seeking answers promised by the ghost of a little girl._

_But the answers may prove elusive.  And his journey may bring only death._

 

Bill Malloy was standing outside, in late afternoon sunlight, gazing at the blue sky.  For a moment he lost all his cares and thoughts, caught up in the beauty of what he saw.  For that moment he could dream that he had nothing to do but this.  He could just drift.  He could lose himself in the peace and freedom of that endless, perfect blue.

Then he realized how wrong everything was.

_It’s 10:30 at night in a thunderstorm.  Not 3:00 on a sunny afternoon.  I’m in the drawing room at Collinwood.  Not outside … somewhere._

But if he _wasn’t_ actually here, his senses were doing a pretty danged good job of convincing him that he was. 

The wind was cold, sweeping upwards off the sea.  He could smell the familiar excitement and promise of the ocean air.  Through the soles of his shoes, he could feel the gravel of the road he was standing on.

_The road,_ he thought.  He looked around him in sudden, utter confusion.

_Where the hell is this road?_ he demanded of himself.  _Where the hell am I?_  

It _ought_ to be the road to Collinwood, somewhere close to the top of the hill.  The slope of the hillside seemed right.  The scrubby, wind-twisted trees were the same as those that made up the woods between Collinwood and the Old House.  Though Bill thought the trees by the roadside ought to be taller than these trees were. 

If he walked uphill just a little higher, just past the next bend in the road, he ought to reach the turnoff to the Jamison Collins Memorial Vista Point, named for Liz’s father.  The place where the photographer was standing when he took that shot of Collinsport and the bay that was used on the postcards in the rack next to the cash register in the Collinsport Inn Café.

But the road to Collinwood wasn’t a gravel road.  It had been paved since the 1920s – as Bill knew full well, since his dad had worked in the crew that did the first paving work when Bill was ten or so.

The roadside looked weird to him, too.  On the road he drove every day, the cuts that made the roadbed had long since been smoothed out by time.  Grass and moss almost completely hid the stones reinforcing the line where the road had been cut into the hill.

But no grass or moss was hiding these stones.  The cuts in the hillside were angular and stark.  The stones that lined them looked like they could have been hauled here and set in place just today.

Bill thought that if he were to stand at Vista Point on the road to Collinwood, on an afternoon like this one, there wouldn’t be much for him to hear.  Just the usual sounds of the wind and the seagulls.  But today, there was a weirdly mixed jumble of sounds. 

Distantly, up the hill, he could hear voices.  What he heard had the bustling sound of a busy worksite.  Men calling back and forth; an occasional shouted order.  Hammering.  Lots of hammering.  And a long, squealing sort of noise that he thought might come from machinery using some kind of pulley.

From far nearer to him, down the slope a piece but hidden by a curve in the road, came another oddly out-of-place sound.  It was a whinnying horse. 

He supposed someone _might_ ride a horse on the road up to Collinwood, on a beautiful day like today.  Tourists, probably, on a horseback ride to Vista Point – although tourists were few and far between, in Collinsport in November.       

If they were tourists, he thought, then they were tourists in trouble.  Something was unmistakably bothering that horse.  Its whinnies sounded frantic, either out of pain or out of fear. 

Suddenly Bill thought of the rash of animal killings over the past several months.  The calves and lambs and other animals that went missing, only to be found a day or two later, dead.  And the rumor that kept going around town that when the bodies were found, they had been drained of blood.

Bill started down the road at a fast jog.  He was almost at the spot where the road curved, when he stopped to ask himself what he thought he was going to do if the mysterious animal killer _was_ there, just around that bend.

Did he think he could stop it?  Fight it?  Sure, if he had a shotgun, maybe.  But the most formidable weapon he had on him at the moment was his Swiss army knife.

So instead Bill scrambled up the road bank, on the inner curve of the road, and advanced more cautiously, trying his best to keep to the cover of the trees.  He’d had to choose the inner curve, because at this point the hillside dropped off more-or-less as a cliff at the other side of the road. 

_I do know this place,_ Bill thought uneasily.  _I know this stretch of road._  

Then he reached a spot where he could see what was around that bend. 

He held back, keeping under the minimal cover of one of the larger trees.  And he asked himself how he could really be seeing what he saw. 

It looked like an illustration for a novel, or maybe something out of a western.

He was staring at a stagecoach wreck.

The best he could figure it was that the horses must have bolted, and the one at the outer edge of the road had done its best to pull the whole carriage down the cliff.  That horse was now sprawled on the slope, absolutely still.  The other horse, trapped in the harness that still linked it to its fellow, was throwing itself from its back to its side, neighing in protest as it fought to get its hooves beneath it again.

A few feet away from Bill, a man was lying in the road.  His awkwardly splayed position made it only too clear that he was dead.  One didn’t even need to see the glazed stare on his face, to know that.

The stagecoach, or carriage, or whatever it was, had apparently been saved from going off the cliff by jamming up against two trees.  The front axle had broken off the coach.  The vehicle leaned against the trees, like a drunk taking a break from walking home in the hope that his head would stop spinning.

A man was standing at the open door of the coach, apparently rummaging around through something just inside.

Bill started hurrying into the bizarre accident scene.  “Hello,” he called to the man at the coach door.  “Is anybody hurt in there?”

The man whirled to stare at Bill, dropped whatever he’d been holding, and took off like a jackrabbit into the trees and brush.

“Hey!” Bill yelled after him.  “Hey, you!  Stop!”  The order, of course, was useless, and Bill might as well not have bothered.

“What the hell?” Bill muttered to himself, as he ran the last few feet to the wrecked coach.

The man who’d just fled clearly had no good intentions.  An old-fashioned-looking leather bag of some kind was sitting open on the bench next to the door, and bits of clothing, books and papers were scattering out of it.  But Bill had more important things to grab his attention than the violated leather bag.

Two people were inside the carriage.  The man was a pudgy, red-haired fellow.  As near as Bill could figure it, he was dressed up like Benjamin Franklin.  And he was dead.  The angle of the coach made it look like he was still standing, leaning back against the far door, where the tree held the vehicle up.  Bill thought it likely that the tree was what had killed the man.  It was a good bet that his neck had snapped, when coach and passenger slammed into the tree as they careened off the road.

Bill also thought it likely that the woman in the coach had been saved by her traveling companion’s pudginess.  From where she was lying in front of the corpse, half on and half off of the bench, Bill imagined that she might have been thrown against the other passenger and bounced off.  The man’s well-padded build probably cushioned her from the crash.

The woman was young.  She wore a long dress and a cape, and she looked like she was struggling back to consciousness.  Her eyes were closed, but she was moaning.  The only injury he could see on her was a large, purplish bruise just above her right eye.  She was moving around enough on her own that he figured he didn’t need to worry about whether to move her or not.

And he _should_ move her, before she regained consciousness and saw what had happened to the man in the coach.

Gingerly Bill climbed in.  He took hold of her under the arms, to boost her up.  Then he used an awkward sort of fireman’s carry in order to get her outside.

An irrelevant and completely inappropriate thought came to him in the process.  The young lady was apparently not a user of deodorant.  It was such a danged tasteless and pointless thought, under the circumstances, that he was disgusted with himself for even having noticed it.

He carried her to the grassy slope at the other side of the road.  Setting her gently down, he glanced to make sure that from this spot, she wouldn’t be able to see the dead man in the road when she woke up 

Bill took off his tweed jacket, folded it up and tucked it under her head as a pillow. 

_Now what?_

He wondered if he should be trying to revive her.  Maybe he should.  But surely it couldn’t hurt to let her revive on her own, could it?

The truth of the matter was that he hated the thought of waking her.  He wanted to put off the moment of her waking for as long as he could, because of what she would have to face when she woke up.

_I can do something to help that poor horse, anyway,_ Bill thought.  He walked around slowly to approach the struggling animal from the front, to try and minimize the chance of it panicking on him. 

“Hello, horse.  You’re all right.  Don’t be afraid.  My name’s Bill.  Nothing’s going to hurt you.  You hang in there, all right?   I’m going to cut you loose.”

His soothing talk seemed to be working.  The horse, a dapple gray like its dead fellow, lay on its side and studied him as he walked near.  It gave only a few desultory kicks, instead of flailing wildly as it had done a few moments before.

Cautiously Bill made his way around until he reached the leather traces connecting it to the carriage.  Keeping up his hopefully-calming commentary for the horse, he knelt and started sawing through the strap with his Swiss army knife.

It was the work of less than a minute to set the horse free.  Still talking to the horse and still moving carefully, Bill took hold of the trailing reins. 

From way the animal had been kicking, Bill thought it probably hadn’t broken any bones.  This was confirmed now by the eagerness with which it got its feet under it, and stood up with only a slight amount of wobbling.

Bill wasn’t much of a horseman.  But he was around horses regularly whenever he visited his cousins at their farm.  He was grateful for that experience now, as the horse docilely let him lead it to the slope across the road, where it could get in some serious grazing.  Bill let out a long puffing breath of relief as he tied the reins to a tree branch.

_So far so good,_ Bill thought.  _Now I’ve only got the rest of this madness to deal with._

He thought he ought to post some kind of warning sign at both approaches to the accident scene.  Something that would hopefully forestall another accident.  It was the sort of thing that could happen too danged easily, if someone was driving too fast and came upon the carriage wreck without any warning.

But what sort of warning could he rig up?  He could hardly stand at both approaches to the wreck himself.  And he doubted the coach had traffic flares in it, or any such useful device.

Bill didn’t want to look around him.  He didn’t want to see what he was seeing.

_I know this place.  It’s impossible.  But I know it._

The road at this point made a “y” shape, with the wreck having taken place in the y’s upper left curve.  Only that left-hand curve had the look of the road he’d seen further up the hill: the fresh cuts in the earth, the gravel, the new-looking reinforcing stones at the verge.

Where the road continued downhill, forming the base of the y, it was a simple dirt road.  No gravel.  It looked like it had been there for years.

It was the right-hand curve of the y that made his flesh crawl to look at it, and made his guts clench up in denial.  He turned quickly away from that right-hand road.  But the conclusion was inescapable, whichever direction he looked.

_I do know this place.  I’m at Bleeder Valve Bend.  Roger Collins had his accident here.  He drove his car off the road right about where that smashed-up carriage is now._

The story behind the treacherous curve at Bleeder Valve Bend was that the original road had gone in a different direction.  Instead of striking upwards to the top of the hill, it had followed the easier grade off to the right, to the original Collins house.  To the Old House.

Until Cousin Barnabas came to town, the road to the Old House had been closed.  The gate across it was so thickly overgrown that generations of people had probably driven past it and never even realized the road was there.   When Barnabas Collins moved in, Willie Loomis hacked away the brush and vines from the gate.  He had also worked a week or so on the project of removing the trees and bushes that had grown up in the road.  Even after all of Loomis’ labors, the vegetation still narrowed the old road to such an extent that if two cars happened to meet at any point along it, one or the other had to back up all the way to the end of the road.

But the road to the Old House was not overgrown now.  The roadway to the right was clear and open.  And there was no gate across it.  It was a dirt road, like the road down the hill.  A well-established road that had obviously been used for years.

_The road to the Old House is open.  The road up to Collinwood looks like it was only built yesterday._

Dazedly, to avoid thinking, Bill pulled out his pocket watch.  It occurred to him that when Sheriff Patterson was investigating this accident, he would want Bill to tell him what time he had found the wreck.

But it looked like Bill’s watch wasn’t going to be any help.  It was still running; the second hand was ticking cheerfully along.  But the time his watch showed to him was 10:45.

_Sure, that makes sense,_ thought Bill.  _It must have been 10:15 by the time we started the séance; by the time Liz brought the candles and all of us were there.  Makes sense that it would have been 10:30 or so when I – left.  It’s probably been another fifteen minutes since then._

_But it isn’t 10:45 now._ From the look of the afternoon light, a bit after 3:00 was a better bet.

Bill noticed his hand was shaking as he wound his pocket watch a few turns and then put the watch away.

_Do you really think George Patterson is going to drive up that hill to investigate this wreck?  Do you really think anyone is going to drive up that hill in a_ car _at all?_

_Do you really still think you’re_ when _you’re supposed to be?  Can you still believe it, when the road isn’t paved yet, when the road to the Old House is open, when the road to Collinwood looks like its just been built?_

_When there’s a_ stagecoach _, of all things, wrecked at Bleeder Valve Bend?  When the poor dead fellow inside the coach is wearing a Benjamin Franklin costume?_

It was almost a relief when the young lady at the roadside starting moving about.  Her faint moans turned into frantic, incoherent words.  At least in trying to help her, Bill might be able to put off some of what he didn’t want to think.

Although she wasn’t very likely to distract him from his worries.  She was part-and-parcel of the whole problem.  She looked just as antique as the dead man in the carriage.  The dress she was wearing looked the same sort of style as those gowns Carolyn and Vicki wore to Barnabas’ famous costume party.

The young woman gave a small scream.  She sat bolt upright.  “Oh, my God, the coach!” she cried out.  “Oh my God!”

“You’re all right,” Bill said, hurrying up to her.  “Please don’t be frightened.  My name’s Bill Malloy.  I found the wreck and got you out of the carriage.”

Her owl-eyed stare at him made it obvious that she found his appearance at least as outlandish as he found hers.  Although, Bill thought, once one got past the issue of her antique clothes, she didn’t look outlandish at all.  She was a good-looking kid, probably no more than 20.  Bill could easily imagine her hanging around with Carolyn.  With her long dress and her disheveled hairdo that had presumably been a lot more elaborate before the carriage wreck, what she looked most like to Bill was a high school girl who had stayed out all night on her Prom night.

“May I ask your name, miss?” Bill asked her. 

Still staring at him warily, she managed, “Wick.  Phyllis Wick.”

“Miss Wick … I’m sorry, I have to ask you this.  Are you traveling with anyone?  The man in the carriage – is he a relative or friend of yours?”

Phyllis Wick shook her head.  “No.  No.  I’m traveling alone.  Mr. Fleming only boarded the coach this morning.”  Understanding started to grow in her expression.  She whispered fearfully, “Why?  What’s happened to him?”

“I’m sorry, miss.  I’m afraid he was killed.  So was another man.  I suppose he was probably the driver.  His body is there in the road, past the coach.  Where it would make sense for it to be, if he’d been thrown from the driver’s seat.”

“Oh, my God,” whispered Phyllis Wick.  Then with a confused frown she murmured, “But … there were two of them riding up front.  The driver and the guard.  Isn’t there anyone else here?”

“Not now,” answered Bill.  “But when I first found the wreck, there was a man at the coach door.  He ran away into the woods when I called to him.  Maybe he was the driver or the guard.”

“But I don’t understand,” she protested.  “Why would either of them run away?”

_Because he feels he’s responsible for the wreck,_ Bill thought.  But if Phyllis Wick hadn’t thought of that, he wasn’t going to mention it to her.  Instead he asked, “Do you know how the wreck happened?”

“No … I’m afraid I’d fallen asleep.”  Her cheeks went pink at that admission.  She added defensively, “It’s been a long journey.  I was dozing, and I woke when the coach started jolting about, and … poor Mr. Fleming shouted to me that the team had bolted.  That’s all I know.”

Something else that she probably knew, Bill didn’t want to ask.  But if it was true, then he couldn’t change the truth by putting off asking about it.

“Do you know where we are?” he asked her.  “Is this the road to Collinwood?”

“To the Collins family’s house?  Yes, of course it is.  That’s where I’m going.  I’ve been hired on there as governess.”

_As governess._

A chill made its way through him.  He thought of the words Vicki-as-Sarah had spoken near the end of the séance. 

_Why is my new governess late?_

“We’d better get you to them as soon as we can,” Bill said. “They’ll be worrying about you.  Do you think you can stand up?”

Phyllis Wick took his hand that he held out to her for support, while she gathered up her long skirt with her other hand and gingerly got to her feet.  She looked a little unsteady, and she bit her lip.  But she nodded.

“Can you ride a horse?” Bill asked.

“Of course,” she said, looking at him as though he were insane to ask.  But then her cheeks turned pink with embarrassment again, and she added, “I never have without a saddle, though.”

He offered, “I can walk alongside to lead the horse.  I’ll be there to steady you if you need it.”

Miss Wick hesitated and then nodded again.  Bill told her, “I’ll bring the horse to you.  You stay here.”  When he returned leading the now apparently calm and patient steed, Bill went on with some advice that he thoroughly hoped she would follow.  “When we leave, Miss Wick, keep your eyes to the right.  The body in the road is over to the left, just ahead.  There’s no sense in your seeing that if you don’t have to.”

With a look of dread, she swallowed and then gave one more nod.  Bill noticed that she was shivering.

He reached down and picked up his jacket from the grassy slope.  “You’re cold.  You’re welcome to wear this.”

“But … then you’ll be cold.”

“I’m a Mainer,” Bill told her, with a smile.  “We’re used to cold.”

Phyllis Wick smiled timidly back at him.  She did seem to eye Bill’s tweed jacket as though it was the strangest item of clothing she had ever laid eyes upon.  Nonetheless she put it on, underneath her cloak.  “Thank you,” she whispered.

She turned to the horse with a look of trepidation, presumably trying to work out the best way to get onto it.  Then another thought came to her and cast aside everything else.

“My reticule!” she cried out.  “I must have my papers – my references.”  Whirling suddenly, she raced toward the carriage.

“Miss Wick!” Bill yelled.  “Don’t!  Let me get it for you.  Don’t look in there!”

It was too late, of course.  She reached the carriage door before he had any chance of stopping her.  She put one foot on the step and looked in.

She screamed, three or four times.  Bill had followed her, although thoroughly too late.  He grabbed her shoulder with one hand while holding the horse’s reins with the other.  Phyllis Wick whirled back to Bill and seized his shirt front in both her hands.  Then suddenly she was sobbing against his chest.

“Poor Mr. Fleming,” she choked out.  “Poor Mr. Fleming.”

“I’m sorry,” Bill said.  Grimly he thought that it would probably be a lot harder to calm her down than it had been to calm the horse.  “I’m sorry you had to see that.”  _Of course,_ he thought, _you wouldn’t have had to see it if you’d just done as I said._ But there wasn’t any point in mentioning that. 

Gulping down her sobs, the girl backed away from him.  This time her cheeks didn’t turn pink; they turned crimson.  “I do beg your pardon, Mr. – Mr. Malloy, was it?” she asked, and he nodded.  “I don’t know how I could have taken such a liberty.  I can’t imagine what you must think of me.  I promise you, I am a respectable woman—”

“I have no doubt of it,” Bill assured her.  He had to work hard to keep a straight face in response to that speech.  He thought it sounded like it should have come from some ancient, pince-nez-wearing maiden aunt, instead of from a girl who looked like she ought to be wearing a mini-dress and jiving around to the jukebox at the Blue Whale.

Trying to put aside all such unhelpful thoughts, he continued, “Don’t let it worry you, miss.  You’ve had a bad shock.  You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.  We should get you to the folks at Collinwood as soon as we can.”

“Would you …” she began, her gaze fluttering downward, “I hate to ask you to go in there.  But – my reticule – it’s made from the same fabric as my cloak – if you could find it for me … and the valise by the door, that’s mine, too …”

Bill nodded and handed her the horse’s reins.  He wouldn’t be able to tell a reticule from a hole in the ground.  But there was a cloth drawstring purse on the floor of the coach which looked the same rust-orange color as her cape, so he figured that had to be it.  He retrieved it and handed it to her, then went back for the “valise,” which the mysterious man at the carriage door had been rummaging through.

The state of her luggage was not lost on Phyllis Wick.  An offended look took over from her embarrassment and shock.  She demanded, “Why has my valise been opened?”

“The man who was here when I first found the wreck,” Bill told her, “I’m afraid he was looking through it.”  

She pursed her lips.  On handing the horse back over to Bill, she knelt down and angrily shoved escaping petticoat-edges and heaven knew what other clothing items back down into the bag.  She remarked, “He must have had a disappointment.  If he was a thief, I doubt he was looking for _Deportment and Etiquette for the Young Gentlewoman_.”  Phyllis Wick closed up her valise with an irritated snap, looked into her reticule and was apparently satisfied with its contents.  “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, Mr. Malloy.  Shall we go?”

“Ay-yuh,” he said.  Boosting the young lady up onto the horse was not as awkward as he’d thought it might be.  He only had to kneel and cup his hands for her to use as a stirrup, and she managed the rest.  Then they were ready to set out, with him holding the reins in his right hand and Phyllis Wick’s valise in his left.  He had a few doubts about the wisdom of her riding side-saddle without a saddle, but hopefully he’d be able to grab her in time if she started to fall. 

To his sharp relief, she followed his instructions to the letter by keeping her gaze to the right as they departed the scene of the accident.  Bill felt guilty about looking at the body himself as they passed it in the road, as if his glance was a violation of the dead man’s privacy.  But he’d thought he needed to check something.  What he saw added one more piece of evidence to the theory that Bill was very, very out-of-place.  Or out-of-time.

He couldn’t see much of this corpse’s clothing, besides a big overcoat and boots.  But a couple of feet away from the dead man lay a hat that had presumably been his.  The hat, battered and stained with sweat, was an honest-to-God tricorn.

Phyllis Wick asked as they started the trudge up the hill, “Are you sure this is the right way?  We shouldn’t have taken the other road?”

“I don’t know, miss,” he answered.  “But I heard voices up the hill here earlier.  There must be people nearby.  Seems the quickest way to get you to the people who’ll be looking for you.”

Of course the main reason he hadn’t taken the road to the right, was simply because he was afraid to.  He was afraid to admit so clearly to himself that he might somehow be in a time when the Collins family lived down that road, instead of up the hill.  When the Old House wasn’t old at all.

They passed the spot where Bill had first found himself standing, and reached the stretch of road that should hold the turnoff to Jamison Collins’ memorial vista point.  Of course there was no turnoff.

You couldn’t get as good a view from the road here as from the vista point itself.  But the view would be more than good enough to tell him what he needed to know.  He could feel it behind him, like hostile eyes burning into his back.  He felt a sickly wave of panic and an irrational urge not to look.  If he didn’t look at it, he might be able to hold off the truth for just that little bit longer.

_It’ll be there, all the same.  It will be there whether you look at it or not._

So as the road leveled out where the turnoff ought to be, Bill stopped as though taking a break to catch his breath.  And he turned and looked at the view from the hill.

Far down below them, as it ought to be, was Collinsport.  Collinsport and the bay.

Only the village that he saw there, made tiny by the distance, was probably one-third the size of the Collinsport he knew.  Almost all of the buildings clustered right around the harbor itself, and a few streets inland.  There was none of the sprawl into the surrounding countryside that Collinsport had seen in the boom years since the war.  The hospital building, on the highway just south of town, wasn’t there.  And even with the sun as bright as it was, on this late afternoon, nowhere could he see the gleam of light reflecting off of any car.

Automatically he glanced to where the Collins canning plant should be.  It wasn’t.  But there was another large building in its place, with a network of docks around it and a couple of tall sailing ships nearby.

_The Collins ship-building factory._ He recognized the basic outline of the building that had been torn down to make way for the canning plant, although he had never seen it with his own eyes.  An old painting of that factory hung in the front entranceway of the Collins Cannery.

Bill glanced a small piece further north, to the place where his own house ought to be.  The house his grandfather had built, that Bill had moved out of three months ago when he and Liz were married.

He saw the small point of land thrusting out into the sea, where the house should stand.  But the point was empty.  No trace of the familiar red roof that he ought to be able to glimpse down there, like a friendly, welcoming beacon.

_That tells me one thing, anyway.  Whenever we are, it’s before 1885, since Granddad hasn’t built the place yet._

Of course, he could simply ask Phyllis Wick what the date was.  But he couldn’t quite bring himself to do that yet.  A very large portion of his mind did not want to know.

Miss Wick gave an appreciative little gasp at the view.  She murmured, “It’s beautiful.”

“Yes,” he heard himself answer flatly.  “It is.”

As they continued up the hill, the worksite sounds that he had noticed earlier became more and more obvious.  He had no doubt that they would find a construction site at the top of  Widow’s Hill, although it seemed odd to him without the sounds he automatically expected to hear such as truck engines and jack-hammers.

The road at last wound its way to the hilltop.  The ground here had been leveled to prepare for the great house’s construction.  And the travelers had their first view of Collinwood.

“Oh, my heavens!” exclaimed Phyllis Wick.  “Just look it!”

_Yes,_ thought Bill Malloy.  _Just look at it._

Even though he’d been sure of what he would see, the sight itself sent despair curdling through his insides.

The semi-circular driveway up to the main door wasn’t built yet, nor the portico sheltering the grand entranceway.  The body of the house itself was all there, all the main features that he recognized: the central house, the two wings, the ridiculously gothic-looking tower.  But it was clearly still a work-in-progress.  There was wooden scaffolding along the east wing, and he saw several men up there installing the shingles on the roof.  Around and about he could see at least five large wagons and a veritable army of carts and wheelbarrows.  There had to be a crew of at least fifty men bustling around the place.   

Three of those men were pushing wheelbarrows full of bricks toward the corner of the west wing.  Bill thought they were probably on their way behind the house to construct the terrace outside the dining room.  Or maybe the gazebo.  A short distance behind them hurried a man with another wheelbarrow, in which, by God, rode that same dog-ugly naked cherub statue which would preside over the fountain on the terrace two hundred or however many years later.

Standing near the front entrance were three men in the middle of a conference.  Bill thought it looked like the construction foreman talking things through with his employers.  One man, plainly dressed, held out what were probably blueprints.  The other two, in clothing that made them as colorful as parrots, stood at either side of him studying the plans.

Bill pointed them out to Miss Wick.  “Those are probably two of the Collinses.  I’ll take you over to them.”

As they set out again, Phyllis Wick asked in suddenly nervous tones, “Do you know anything about the Collins family?”

“Nope,” he lied.  “Afraid not.”

It did not take long for the three men to notice the odd little procession approaching them.  They seemed to hold a brief consultation.  Then, while the plainly-dressed man held back, rolling up his blueprints, the other two of them strode toward the newcomers.

And the closer those newcomers got to the great house, the larger grew the number of workmen who halted in their labors and turned to stare at them. 

Bill thought, _Just like in the Blue Whale.  When someone from away walks in for the first time._

_And boys,_ he thought to the staring construction crew, _you have no idea just how much “from away” I am._   

Then Bill and Miss Wick stopped to exchange greetings with those two colorfully-dressed men.  And Bill barely stopped himself from blurting out two names, and making an utter frickin’ idiot of himself.

_Keep your mouth shut, Bill,_ he ordered.  _Keep your mouth shut and don’t stare._ Don’t _look at them like they’re ancestral portraits who’ve come to life and climbed down from their frames to haunt Collinwood._

_Ancestral portraits who also just happen to be the living spit of two men I know._

One of those two spitting images – the one who appeared to be dressed for Christmas, since he was sporting a green frock coat and a red brocade vest – Bill supposed that he had more-or-less expected to see. 

After all, Bill had been living in Collinwood for three months, now.  Three months of daily encounters with the supercilious image of the first Barnabas Collins, in its gilt frame by the front door – not to mention nearly as frequent encounters with the man’s equally supercilious, look-alike descendant – made it seem a foregone conclusion that the first person he would run into now just had to be Barnabas.

It was the other man whose appearance shocked Bill.  The man who might have been Burke Devlin himself, come back from the dead.  Except that Bill had never seen Burke Devlin wear a powder blue ensemble of excessively figure-hugging trousers, frock coat, embroidered vest and shiny silk cravat.

This blue-clad Burke doppelganger inquired in concern, “What’s happened to you, miss?  You’re hurt.”

Looking flustered, Phyllis Wick slid down from the carriage horse and gave a curtsy.  “Mr. Collins?”

“Jeremiah Collins,” the blue-dressed man answered her, with a bow.  “My brother Joshua is the head of our family.  This is my nephew, Barnabas Collins.”

_Jeremiah,_ thought Bill.  _No wonder our Barnabas suggested that Burke should dress as Jeremiah for that blessed costume party._

_A man in love does many surprising things.  Such as agreeing to wear a 200-or-so-year-old outfit in which he feels just Christly ridiculous, because the woman he loves wants him to wear it._

Bill and Burke had both been proof of that.  Bill supposed now he knew that Burke should have counted himself lucky.  At least the suit their Barnabas had come up with for Burke to wear had not been this powder blue number.

While Bill pondered all of this, introductions were going on _._

“My name is Phyllis Wick.  I’m—”

“Phyllis Wick!” the first Barnabas exclaimed.  “The new governess!  What a relief it is to see you, Miss Wick.  We’ve all been most concerned, and my sister is extremely eager to meet you.”

“But can you tell us what happened?” Jeremiah persisted.  “That bruise—”

“The coach wrecked while we were coming up the hill.  Mr. Malloy here found the wreck and rescued me.”

Hearing his actions described with that grandiose term made Bill feel like a fraud.  He told her brusquely, “Wasn’t much rescuing required.  I just carried you out of the carriage.”

Barnabas Collins put in, “Rescuing or no, we’re obliged to you for helping Miss Wick, and for escorting her here.  Your name is Malloy?” he added, holding out his hand.  To judge from his expression, he was politely attempting not to look as though he thought Malloy was the most oddly-dressed person he had ever set eyes on.

“That’s right,” Bill said, as they shook hands. “Bill Malloy.”

“The accident is a serious one?” Jeremiah asked, shaking hands with Bill in turn. 

“Afraid so,” Bill answered.  “At least two men killed.  Possibly a third missing.”

Barnabas Collins said quietly to his uncle, “I’ll escort Miss Wick home while you see what can be done about the accident.  Do you feel capable of making the trip on foot, Miss Wick?  It’s about a ten-minute walk.  I’m afraid the path between the two houses is not really suitable yet for horseback riding.”

“Certainly I can make it on foot, Mr. Collins,” Phyllis Wick said spiritedly.  A moment later she looked troubled once more, as she remembered, “The horse will need to be returned, anyway.  It’s – it’s one of the carriage horses.”

Bill handed Miss Wick’s leather bag to Barnabas.  With a faint smile, the new governess said, “Thank you for your kindness to me, Mr. Malloy.”

“Glad to be of help,” he told her.  “Good luck in your new job.”  Belatedly he realized that phrase probably didn’t sound like something people would say in the year whatever-this-was.

_Does it matter?  It can’t make any more of a sore thumb out of me than my clothes already do._  

Barnabas held out his arm to Miss Wick, and they set out toward the woods.  Jeremiah turned briskly to Bill.  “Where did the accident take place?’

He had to bite his tongue to keep from saying “Bleeder Valve Bend.”  Instead he answered, “At the curve in the road.  Where the new road starts.”

“Damnation,” muttered Jeremiah Collins.  “Then we may have to accept that our new road killed those men.”  He turned and raised his voice, calling out to the man with the blueprints.  “Mr. Fowle!  We’ll need to use two of your wagons.  And some of your men, as well.  The mail coach has been wrecked in coming up the hill.”

With bustling efficiency, Mr. Fowle the foreman set about putting the expedition together.  Meanwhile, Jeremiah inquired of Bill, “Were you a passenger on the coach?”

Bill Malloy asked himself, _What the hell do I say?_

Maybe someone like Cousin Barnabas could go time-traveling and hope to successfully blend in with the locals.  Bill didn’t think there was a snowball’s chance in hell that _he_ would be able to manage it.  He couldn’t imagine a story he could tell that wouldn’t shipwreck him immediately, on the shoals of inconsistency and his own ignorance.

_The best thing I can do,_ Bill thought, _is pick the lie that’s easiest to keep track of._

He hoped he wasn’t blushing too noticeably as he launched into the lie, “Mr. Collins, I don’t know if I was a passenger on the coach or not.”

Jeremiah Collins’ eyebrows leapt upward in skeptical amazement.  The thought occurred to Bill that Burke Devlin had been in the habit of making that exact same expression.  “You don’t know?”

“That’s right,” Bill said stolidly.  “I don’t remember.  The fact is I don’t remember anything before finding myself standing in the road – just uphill of where I found the wreck.”

“How remarkable,” Jeremiah murmured.  Bill thought he looked a great deal less than convinced.  “But you told us your name.”

_Oh, you noticed that, did you?_

Bill improvised, “I told you what I think my name is.  My best guess.  When I was standing there and realized I didn’t remember anything, I tried to think of my name.  ‘Bill Malloy’ is what popped in to my mind.”

“Truly remarkable,” Jeremiah Collins repeated.  Bill didn’t know if he was buying any of this, or if he was simply too much a gentleman to call Bill a liar to his face.  But the story did seem to intrigue him.  “Then perhaps you were in the accident, and received a blow to the head.  Did you search the wreckage, to see if you recognized anything there?”

“Not yet.  I thought the first thing to do was get Miss Wick to her destination.”

“Then perhaps when we go to the wreck now, you’ll find something that restores your memory.”

Bill felt like a heel to be deceiving the man like this.  Now Jeremiah Collins would probably go searching for clues to recovering Bill’s memory, when there was nothing that needed recovering.

_Nothing except for the way to my own time._

“Mr. Collins,” Bill said.  “Could you tell me the date?”

“Certainly; it’s November the 17th.”

_November 17 th, _Bill thought.  _Just like it is at home._ He persisted, “I meant the year.”

“Oh,” said Jeremiah, and his eyes widened in surprise.  “I apologize.  This is 1795.”

“Thank you.”  Bill wondered if Jeremiah Collins heard the despair in his voice when he said that.

_It’s 1795.  Good for it.  How do I get out of 1795, and find my way home?_

It took less than five minutes for the two wagons to start jolting their way down the hill.  Jeremiah Collins, foreman Fowle, Bill Malloy and 12 other men rode in them, and the borrowed carriage horse followed, tied to the back of the second wagon.

Bill sat in the front of the first wagon, between the driver and Jeremiah Collins.  Bill thought it was likely that if the other men weren’t there, Jeremiah would be peppering him with questions regarding his supposed memory loss.  Fortunately, Mr. Collins was gracious enough to be concerned that the other men shouldn’t overhear that conversation.

So for another few minutes, Bill had nothing to do but think.

Jeremiah’s resemblance to Burke was still throwing him for a loop, although he was trying hard to brace himself to accept it. 

Not that the two men were identical.  He thought that you could stand the two of them next to each other and would certainly be able to tell the difference, not even taking into account the differences in their clothing.  But the resemblance between them was still – as Jeremiah Collins seemed to be fond of saying – remarkable.  If they weren’t twins, they could at least be very similar brothers. 

_So, then,_ Bill thought, _is Burke – I mean,_ was _Burke a Collins descendant?_

_If he was, then the fruit fell very close to the tree, this time.  Just like it did with Cousin Barnabas and his however-many-times great-grandfather._

Bill had never heard of Burke’s people being related to the Collinses.  But he supposed it should be no surprise.  They were an old Collinsport family.  Given enough time, every family in town got to be related to the Collinses, though not all of them had marriage vows connecting them.  It was a reason for Bill to be glad his own family had only lived around here for three generations.

_There’s irony for you,_ thought Bill.  _After all the time and energy Burke spent plotting revenge on the Collinses.  Was he actually plotting against his own relatives?_

_All those times he talked about wanting to see his own portrait hanging there some day in the drawing room at Collinwood._    _Are portraits of his ancestors hanging there already?_

Bill supposed that wouldn’t have changed Burke’s plans.  He wouldn’t have just wanted vengeance for his prison term.  Instead he’d have been sore about being the ignored poor relation.

But, Bill reminded himself, all of that was ended months ago.  Burke _had_ given up on his dreams of revenge, thanks in part to the confession that Roger Collins was maneuvered into making in front of everyone at Collinwood.

_And thanks, in part, to me nearly getting my windpipe crushed and the back of my skull stove in._

And thanks, in a very large part, to a lovely young woman who lived at Collinwood.  A lovely young woman who still believed that Burke was coming back to her.

_How long will Liz believe that_ I’m _coming back to_ her _?_

_Don’t you think like that, Bill.  Don’t you think it._

_I_ will _get back to her.  I’ll get back to her today._

_All I have to do is figure out how._

Bill shuddered as they passed the stretch of road where his memories of this time began.  A couple of minutes later, at the scene of the accident, the men set to work on clearing the road.  They worked quickly, with efficiency and the occasional grim, muttered comment.

They worked with so much efficiency, that Bill felt compelled to ask Jeremiah Collins, “Doesn’t … the sheriff, or someone, need to see this before it’s cleared away?”

“The constable, you mean?”   Jeremiah shook his head.  “He would thank me not at all for forcing him to ride all this way uphill, just to see a wreck that we can perfectly well describe to him.  And what could he do here, at any rate?  There is nothing that can be done for these poor men, save to take their bodies back to the inn and attempt to contact their families.”

“It’s a strange thing,” frowningly remarked the stocky, gray-haired Mr. Fowle.  “That’s Caleb Hodgkins, the guard, there.”  He jerked his thumb toward the body that two of the workmen had picked up from the road and were carrying to one of the wagons.  “So where is Walt?” He went on.  “Walt Moore, the driver.  No sign of his body.  And he isn’t the type to run away.  If he was alive, you’d think he would’ve been the one to report the wreck and fetch help.”

Bill suggested, “Maybe he went down the hill to do that.”

Mr. Fowle hooted.  “Down to the village, all the way around Robin Hood’s barn?  Why would he do that, when he knows the Collins place is right up here?  Walt Moore isn’t daft.”

Bill knew his next comment wasn’t likely to be any better saluted.  But he still thought he had to make it.  He said, “When I first found the wreck, there was a man standing at the carriage door.  I think he was looking through Miss Wick’s luggage.  When I called to him he ran off into the woods.”

Unsurprisingly, foreman Fowle gave a vehement shake of his head.  “Not Walt Moore.  He wouldn’t run off.”

Another of the men, pausing to wipe off sweat and scratch himself, voiced the opinion, “Well, he might, I reckon, if the wreck was his fault.  Or if he thought it was.”

“No, he wouldn’t,” another workman put in.  “Not Walt.”

“How do you know?” snapped the scratching one.  “He’s never had a wreck before, so how do we know what he’d do?”

Jeremiah Collins intervened with, “I suppose it’s possible his body was thrown further down into the brush, where it would be difficult to see it from the road.  If no one has searched there yet, we had better investigate around the edge of the hill.”

Foreman Fowle inquired skeptically, “How many more necks are we planning to break today?”

Mr. Fowle’s skepticism notwithstanding, Bill, Jeremiah and three of the youngest workmen spent a number of minutes scrambling around in the shrubs, where the hillside dove downward and changed its nature to a cliff.  Jeremiah seemed blithely unconcerned by the damage his blue suit sustained in his clambering through the bushes.  All five of them acquired scratches, some dirt, and a collection of burrs in their hair and clothes.  But the search yielded no other result.

“It doesn’t make sense he’d be down there any further,” Bill decided, scowling down the hill in the attempt to glimpse anything that didn’t look like rocks, grass or shrubs.  “The trajectory makes no sense.  He’d need to have been shot out of a catapult to get down there.”

They made their way back to the road.  Jeremiah remarked, “Your assistance is much appreciated, Mr. Malloy.  But we haven’t yet made any progress in answering the questions about you.  Will you examine the baggage from the coach to see if any of it might be yours?”

For appearances’ sake, Bill did just that.  Fortunately, there was not much luggage for him to have to search through.  There was only the leather trunk that had belonged to the passenger Thomas Fleming – identified without question through the clearly-written tags nailed onto both ends of the trunk – and the bags and trunk of mail being shipped on the coach.  Jeremiah Collins examined these, and took charge of a sack filled with letters and parcels for his family.

Twilight was setting in by the time Fowle and his men were ready to continue down the hill to Collinsport.  Moving the bodies into one of the wagons, and covering them with a sailcloth brought down from the construction site, had been only a matter of minutes.  The more time-consuming process was securing the wrecked carriage to the back of a wagon, so it could be towed along behind.

Before they set out, the three other wagons carrying the construction crew had joined them from the great house on the hill.  Bill noticed that all of the wagons had lanterns attached to the front of them.  That was a relief to him, anyway.  It made him less worried that the whole gang of them might get themselves wrecked, making their way down Widow’s Hill in the dark.

Mr. Fowle apparently shared some of Bill’s concerns.  “We’d best be starting down, now, Mr. Collins,” he told Jeremiah.  “I’d like to get most of the way to the village before we completely lose the light.  One wreck on this road today is quite enough.”

“Agreed, Mr. Fowle,” Jeremiah answered.  “Please tell Constable Hemphill that I will be by to see him tomorrow, to provide any assistance I can regarding this wreck.”  He turned to Bill and said, “I’m sorry we don’t seem to have found anything of use to you.  Let us hope that … what you’ve lost will be restored to you soon.  In the meantime, let me invite you to stay with us at Collins House.”  Jeremiah grinned confidentially.  “My brother is rather less hospitable than I am.  But I’m certain I can prevail upon him to extend the invitation to you.  When I tell him that you’re a gentleman in distress, and it is incumbent upon us as the leading family of Collinsport to offer you our hospitality – particularly since you were of such service to our new governess – his pride won’t allow him to be any less than welcoming.”   

“Thank you, Mr. Collins,” Bill said, still feeling like a bastard over the lie about his amnesia.  “I don’t like to impose on you.  But I do feel I should stay near here if I can.  In case something nearby might … might trigger a memory.”

“Come along, then,” said Jeremiah, gesturing grandly at the road to the Old House.  “And by the by,” he added, with another grin, as they started along the road, “instead of you imposing on us, really we will be imposing on you.  I truly feel sorry for any outsider who spends time within the hallowed walls of Collins House.  We’re the sort of family that could have been penned by Moliere.  Each one of us, in our own way, might have been invented by the author to illustrate the foibles of humanity.  Well, apart from Barnabas and Sarah, God bless them.  But the rest of us!”

While they walked, and Jeremiah soliloquized on his family’s eccentricities, Bill was trying not to look amazed at the road to the Old House.  It was twice as wide as the road he knew.  Instead of being half overgrown by scrubby, wild trees, it was bordered by two rows of tall, graceful poplars, spaced at regular intervals.  Bill wondered if any of those poplars, or their descendants, were still out there in these woods in 1967.

“My sister, for a start,” Jeremiah continued.  “She uses her religion as her bulwark against a world in which everything terrifies her.  My sister-in-law, well, she has her own defensive fortifications.  And I fear she retreats further behind them each day.  My brother believes beyond any shadow of doubt that he is the one sane man in an incompetent and pathetic world.  And me?  My over-riding fault is that I talk too much, and I tend to unburden myself of the family’s dirty linens in conversation with perfect strangers!”

Bill had no idea how he should reply to any of this.  Fortunately, Jeremiah did not seem to expect him to.

“I am only attempting to warn you, Mr. Malloy, so that we do not come as too much of a shock to you.  I feel rather guilty that a man who has lost his past as you seem to have lost yours, should encounter the Collinses of Collinsport as the first family in his memory!  Let me reassure you: all families are not like ours.”

“If you don’t mind me saying so,” Bill ventured at last, “listening to you talk, I wonder why you stay here.”

“I don’t mind you saying so at all,” Jeremiah quietly answered.  “I stay because my nephew and niece deserve all the happiness in this world.  And I hope that by being here, I can help to ensure that their happiness is not taken from them.”  

Their walk through the woods ended at a tall, heavily curly-cued iron gate.  Suddenly Bill remembered the ghost of Sarah – if that had really been her – speaking through Vicki in the séance.  She had asked to go to the gate, where she could listen for the sound of the approaching carriage.

He also remembered, when he was six or so years old, venturing into these woods with his two best friends and a few older boys, collecting scrap metal as their way of helping with the War Effort.  One of the older boys had said there was a metal gate at the old Collins house, so they came here to find it.  But the few fragments they had managed to uncover were so eaten away with rust, they collapsed into powder in the boys’ hands.

And there beyond the gate – the gate that was standing tall, proud and untainted by rust – was the Old House.  Collins House, he supposed he should call it, gleaming white out of the evening shadows like some enchanted palace.  As they got closer, hurrying up the ludicrously large front staircase, Bill saw that the unearthly gleam of the walls and massive columns stemmed not from magic but from a fresh coat of whitewash.  But the sparkle of candlelight in the windows still gave him the feeling that the house itself was beckoning him inside.

“Here we are,” said Jeremiah Collins.  “Welcome to the beginning and end of the world.”

As Jeremiah led the way inside, Bill more than half expected to run into Willie Loomis, demanding to know what they were doing there.  The hallway and parlor looked so identical to Cousin Barnabas’ restoration of the place.  Except for the facts that none of the plaster was broken, all of the wallpaper adhered firmly to the walls, the carpeting looked as fresh as though human feet had never touched it, and the parlor chairs looked like a person could actually sit in them without risking being impaled by springs poking out through the upholstery.

And instead of Willie Loomis, a squarely-built gray-haired man dressed like the footmen from the coach in _Cinderella_ was bustling toward them.

_We_ are _in an enchanted castle,_ Bill thought.  _I knew it.  Now, can I find the Fairy Godmother and get her to send me home?_

“Good evening, Riggs,” Jeremiah was saying.  “This is Mr. Malloy; he will be staying with us.  Please have the room next to mine made up for him.”  Jeremiah briefly turned to Bill, adding, “I’m afraid there’s no fireplace in that room, but you should still be cozy enough.  Riggs, see to it there’s a bed-warmer prepared when Mr. Malloy is ready to retire.” 

For one terrible moment, Bill thought Jeremiah must mean a bed-warmer of the feminine variety.  He imagined himself having to fend off the advances of an oversexed chambermaid with a build like that of Raquel Welch.  Then he remembered the long-handled lidded pans for holding hot coals.  They were a dime-a-dozen in every antique shop.  Less dangerous to his virtue as a three-months’-married man than the chambermaid might be, although probably more of a risk for setting the bedclothes on fire. 

“Mr. Malloy’s luggage has been lost,” Jeremiah continued.  “Would you have the chests I sent back from Paris taken to his room?  I bought myself a new wardrobe when I was in Paris this spring,” he explained grinningly to Bill, “so I had all the clothes I’d brought with me sent home; they haven’t even been unpacked.  It looks like we’re pretty much of a size; you should be able to find some outfits that will suit you.  Although I think,” he added, “my shoes will be too small for you.  Riggs, see what you can do about finding some shoes and boots that will fit him.”

“Yes, sir,” said Riggs, keeping his face stoically blank in the midst of this avalanche of orders.  “Will you and Mr. Malloy be wanting supper now?  The family is not dining together tonight.  Mr. Collins, Mrs. Collins and Miss Collins are all dining in their chambers, and Mr. Barnabas is taking his supper with Miss Sarah and her new governess in the nursery.”

“What a shame you won’t get to meet the whole family yet,” Jeremiah remarked, straight-faced but on the edge of laughter.  “But come to think of it, why don’t we join the merriest company in the house?  Would you care to take your supper in the nursery?”

Trying to think of something appropriate-sounding to say, Bill managed, “I’d – be honored.”

So up the stairs they went, through the door from the landing to where the house divided into an “L” of two corridors.  Jeremiah led him in turning to the right, past doors on which he commented, “This is my nephew’s room, this one’s mine, and here’s yours,” and on to the end of the corridor where a door led to another staircase.  Reaching the corridor on the third floor – its floors and walls plain wood, without the wallpaper and wainscoting of the corridor below – Jeremiah rapped at the first door he came to, and was answered by three voices calling, “Come in.”

Phyllis Wick, Barnabas Collins and a girl dressed in white and pink were sitting on the floor at the center of the room, on a colorful coverlet Bill was certain he remembered seeing somewhere around the place at Collinwood.  All three of them hastened to their feet to greet the new arrivals.

_There she is,_ Bill thought.  _The famous Sarah._

She looked around eight or nine years old.  And she was, beyond any doubt, the girl whose portrait he had stared at in the Collins family history book.  Except, of course, that here she was very much alive.  And she looked happy, instead of solemn or bored the way she did in her portrait.

After casting a warm smile at Bill, Miss Wick told the girl, “Sarah, this is Mr. Malloy, the gentleman who rescued me from the carriage wreck.”

Sarah Collins grinned and bobbed into a curtsy.  “ _Bon soir, Monsieur Malloy, et bienvenue à Collins House._ ”   

Bill figured he should enter into the spirit of things, so he bowed back to her and gave his French some exercise with, “ _Merci, Mademoiselle Collins, enchantée de vous rencontrer._ ”

Beaming, Sarah exclaimed to both Miss Wick and Barnabas, “I understood what he said!  Was my pronunciation all right?”

“Yes, Sarah,” answered the governess, “it was very good.” 

Barnabas added, smiling at the girl in obvious affection and pride, “Josette will be very pleased that you’ve worked so hard to learn her language.”

Sarah announced to Bill, “My brother is getting married soon.  His fiancée will be here any day, now.  I hope you’ll still be here to meet her when she arrives.  Are you going to have supper with us?”

“That was our plan, little chatterer,” Jeremiah told her, scooping his niece up in his arms and rubbing noses with her.  “If you would ever let us get a word in edgeways.”

They were soon seated around the coverlet.  While waiting for Jeremiah and Bill’s portion of the supper to arrive, Sarah and Barnabas pretended they were feeding pieces of meat pie to a painted-faced, wood-and-cloth doll and a carved wooden toy soldier.  Before long a young man and woman who Bill supposed must be the kitchen staff arrived bearing more plates, cups, jugs, an additional pie, and a dish Bill thought was probably a baked fish in a fish-shaped pastry shell.  Then the party set about eating their supper with gusto.  Occasionally Bill glanced at the others to make sure he was using the proper 18th-century picnic-on-the-nursery-floor etiquette.

“You do have funny clothes, Mr. Malloy,” Sarah Collins observed, as he passed her the pitcher of milk.  “Where do you come from?”

“Sarah,” Miss Wick chided mildly, and Barnabas told her, “Really, Sarah, it is not polite to pass remarks on people’s clothing.” 

The girl’s breach in courtesy was soon forgotten, as Jeremiah Collins said, “I’m afraid Mr. Malloy cannot tell us where he is from.  It appears some accident has befallen him and he has lost his memory.”

Bill tried not to scowl in embarrassment while Jeremiah recounted the tale of his memory loss.  He noticed Miss Wick eyeing him with a worried frown.  Naturally; it would be too much to hope that she might have forgotten his earlier comment to her that he could handle cold because he was from Maine.  But for now, at least, Phyllis Wick held her peace, saying nothing to suggest his amnesia might not be all it was cracked up to be.  

“This is a genuine mystery!” exclaimed Barnabas Collins.  “We must all vow to do everything we can to help Mr. Malloy regain his memory.”

“I know who you are, Mr. Malloy,” Sarah told him delightedly.  “You’re one of the brothers of Bluebeard’s wife; you look just like him in the picture in my book.  When you killed Bluebeard and rescued your sister, you got a blow on the head, and the effect recurs from time to time and makes you lose your memory.  Your brother and sisters are looking for you now, but since your adventures take you all over the world, they’re starting to lose hope of ever finding you.”

“Ah,” said Jeremiah, “I think you’re an aristocrat who fled the revolution in France.  You came here chasing the treacherous servant who made off with the family treasure when your chateau was sacked by the mob, but he learned you were on his trail, and in the resulting struggle he struck you a blow on the head and left you for dead.  What do you say, Miss Wick?  Who do you believe Mr. Malloy to be?”

“Oh,” answered the governess, smiling shyly and blushing, “I think you were one of the crew on a whaler.  When the ship put in to rest at a tropic isle, you and a shipmate found the treasure that was buried long ago by pirates.  You vowed to share it equally, but your shipmate stole your half and threw you overboard, and when you washed up on the beach here, your memory was gone.  Now you have to regain your memory and get the treasure back, so you can use it to go home and marry your sweetheart.”

“You’re all mistaken,” declared Barnabas.  “Mr. Malloy is actually Dante Alighieri.”

 “Dante Alighieri?” Miss Wick repeated.  “The poet?  Didn’t he live in … in the 14th century?”

 “Naturally.  But remember how he journeyed through Heaven and Hell in search of the beautiful Beatrice?  Well, the gods were moved by his steadfast, undying love, and decided to give Dante and Beatrice another chance at finding happiness together in the world of the living.  But there is always a catch, when the gods give any mortals a chance.  The catch this time is that his memory was taken from him.  He must find his Beatrice again without knowing who he is, who she is, or that he is even searching for her.”

“Ah,” Jeremiah said, and he raised his earthenware cup of cider in a toast to Bill.  “Good luck with that, Mr. Malloy.  Let’s hope there is some friendly god in the neighborhood who’ll be willing to give you a nudge in the right direction.”

Bill tried hard to smile as he raised his own cup in a toast to his dinner-companions.  “Thank you for all your suggestions,” he said.  “I’ll be sure to tell you which one turns out to be right.”

Barnabas Collins presumably noticed the less-than-happy expression on Bill’s face.  At any rate, it was at this moment that he said, “It’s getting close to your bedtime, Sarah.”

“Oh, no it isn’t!” she exclaimed.  “Not yet!”

“Well, it’s your doll’s bedtime, anyway,” her brother told her.  “And my soldier’s.  You know it isn’t good for dolls and wooden soldiers to stay up too late.”

“Besides,” added Jeremiah, “It’s been a trying day for Miss Wick and Mr. Malloy.  And Barnabas needs his rest, so he can be at his best to welcome his fiancée.  I’m really the only one of us who can think of staying up all night carousing!”

They parted soon afterward, all of them warmly wishing each other good night.  Jeremiah walked downstairs with Bill and left him at the door of Bill’s guest room.  His parting invitation was, “If you decide you’d like some carousing, my room is next door, and I know where to find the key to the wine cellar.”

For the first moment since discovering the carriage wreck, Bill Malloy was alone.

“Dante Alighieri,” he muttered.  “Seeking for Beatrice.  I hope there _is_ some friendly god in the neighborhood who’ll give me a helping hand.”

Only one candle burned in the room when he walked in, but there were several others about: two in a double sconce on the wall, and another, in a hurricane lamp, on the chest of drawers beside the window.  The lit candle was on the small table that stood by a simple, unadorned bed.  Something looked odd to him about the metal candleholder, and he sat down on the edge of the bed to examine it.

_Nifty little thing,_ he thought.  It turned out that the candleholder was mounted on the lid of a tinderbox.  Taking the lid off the box revealed a piece of flint, a curved flint-steel, a bit of dark, charred-looking cloth, and several wooden slivers, like matches only without the match heads.

_Right,_ Bill thought.  _I guess matches don’t exist yet._ It occurred to him that it was a pity he didn’t smoke.  If he did, he would probably have brought a matchbook or two back to 1795 with him.

Naturally, he had practiced fire-starting in Boy Scouts.  But there’d been a lot of water under the bridge since then.  So as he sat there he tried out the tinder-lighting process a couple of times, to assure himself he could both get the tinder started and, more crucially, get it securely put out again.

_That really would be Murphy’s Law, if I were to go back in time to the Collinses’ past and end up setting the Old House on fire._

_Cousin Barnabas would never forgive me._

  _Fine,_ he told himself, _so now I know how to start a fire in the 18 th century.  _

_What I need_ _to know is how to get_ out _of this century._

A quick check told him that the promised bed-warmer was in place, between the sheets at the foot of the bed.  He found a jug of water and a basin on the chest of drawers by the window.  Just as he realized that no one had mentioned where the bathroom was, he looked under the bed and found a white-and-blue flowered chamberpot.

_What do you do with this once you’ve used it?_ he wondered.  Presumably one did not just dump the contents out the window.  He supposed that the dumping and cleaning of chamberpots must be among some of the servants’ duties.

A long black coat with a short cape attached at the shoulders hung from a peg on the back of the door.  Next to it, on another peg, hung his own tweed jacket that he had loaned to Phyllis Wick.  He put his jacket on now, thinking that Jeremiah’s description of this room as “cozy” was not exactly the word he would use for it.

Against one wall were a couple of large chests, which he supposed must hold the clothes on loan to him from Jeremiah Collins.  Bill picked up the candle in its holder and walked over to take a look inside the chests, grimacing at the thought that they might hold multiple variations on Jeremiah’s blue suit.  Fortunately, a brief examination showed him that the gentleman’s older outfits were a good deal more restrained than his blue ensemble, with tan and brown being the favored colors.  Bill supposed it made sense that the vivid costume Jeremiah was wearing today would have been part of the new wardrobe he had purchased in Paris. 

_It’s good of Jeremiah to lend me these things.  But God, I hope I’ll have no opportunity to wear them!_

He had a plan he meant to try out.  But he needed to wait until it seemed more likely the people of the household were asleep, before putting his plan into action.

Besides – if there was logic in any of this – it seemed logical for him to have the plan in motion at around 10:30 at night.

He had noticed the clock on the parlor mantelpiece when they first arrived at the house, while Jeremiah was giving his orders to Riggs.  It had been only a little past 5:00, then.  Which meant that at the absolute latest, it might be about 7:00 now. 

Two and a half hours, at least, to sit here, before he could make any attempt. 

Even though he had wound up his watch when he went to bed last night – last night in 1967 – and he had given it another couple of winds earlier today, he took it out from his pocket now and wound it again. 

It gave him a strange sort of comfort to look at his watch and see its second hand still moving, still keeping 1967 time.  It made him feel there was at least one fragile thread connecting him to his time.  He could look at his watch and see the same time as Liz would see if she glanced up to the grandfather clock in the foyer.  As he knew she would do, over and over, while she paced there in anger and fear, waiting for some kind of answer.

Right now his watch told him it was 2:24.  He thought, _2:24 in the morning.  I’ve been here for just about four hours.  For them, it’s almost four hours since I – disappeared._

He wondered what had been happening at Collinwood over those four hours.  They _ought_ to know his disappearance was a side effect of the séance.  But he could imagine that some of them – Roger, for a start – would still be insisting he might have just gotten up from the table in the middle of the séance and gone outside for a walk. 

Had they called Sheriff Patterson yet?  Probably not.  They would probably wait until daylight, and give George a call if Bill hadn’t turned up by then.  He figured he knew exactly how George was going to react.  He could hear the sheriff’s down-to-earth efforts to calm everyone down: “Now, Liz, Bill’s a grown man.  He can take care of himself.” 

He could also see the troubled frown with which George would admit, as if talking to himself, “Bill’s not the type to up and vanish.  Not if there was any way he could help it.”

His car would still be in the garage.  His overcoat would still be hanging there next to the front door.  Someone would point out that he would scarcely have gone for a walk in a thunderstorm without at least taking his coat.  That morning they would call the cannery just to confirm what they already knew.  They would be told that no, Mr. Malloy hadn’t come in to work yet.  And he hadn’t been there on the docks that morning to see the fleet set out, like he was every day.

_One thing is for sure,_ Bill thought.  _When I get back, Miss Hoffman will have every right to tell me “I told you so.”_

_She kept saying the most important thing was never to break the circle._

_Of course, she didn’t tell us we could get sucked through a hole in time if we broke it!_

He sat there watching the candle slowly burn lower.  He sat there obsessively checking his watch, listening as the great house around him settled down for the night.

At first he heard frequent footsteps in the hallway.  Little by little those sounds grew less.  Around 8:00 he heard what were probably a man’s footsteps going past his doorway, and he figured that Barnabas must have finally gotten his little sister tucked in to bed.  That the owner of those footsteps was Barnabas seemed confirmed when Bill heard a knock, probably on Jeremiah’s door.  For the next quarter hour he could hear, off and on, men’s voices carrying mutedly to him through the wall that separated Jeremiah’s room from his.  Probably uncle and nephew catching each other up on the day’s events.  Maybe talking of the upcoming arrival of Barnabas’ fiancée.  Almost certainly discussing the carriage accident and their mysterious guest who might or might not have amnesia. 

Then in the hallway Bill heard Barnabas bidding his uncle good night.  There was very little to hear after that.  A couple of times noises carried to him that were probably the sound of Jeremiah closing a dresser drawer.  Then nothing further came through from the room next door.  Bill supposed his gracious host had retired to bed.

_Granddad and Grandma always did talk about how much earlier people went to bed in the old days, before electric lights._  

Not even 9:00 yet, and the great house was silent except for the occasional creak.  There wasn’t even a thunderstorm to liven things up.

When it had to be around 9:30, Bill decided he had finally waited long enough.

He thought about it for a moment and then made up his mind to wear the coat Jeremiah had loaned him.  If his experiment paid off and he found himself back in his own time, the coat would make a nice souvenir from 1795.  And he didn’t think Jeremiah Collins would be too bitter about losing it.

Coat on, and carrying the candle in its tinderbox-candleholder, he set out into the corridors of Collins House.

At every moment he expected to encounter some member of the household.  Instead, he made it without incident down to the front door, and out into the night.

The moon was setting.  He could just see a last sinking glimmer of it through the trees.  But it was a clear night, and the stars were out in force.  At the top of the great stairway in the Collins House garden he put out the candle, with the detachable snuffer that was hooked to the candleholder.  He thought again how much he liked this little piece of 18th-century technology.  _I wouldn’t mind taking this back to 1967,_ he thought as he stowed candle and candleholder in one of the greatcoat’s pockets.  If the candleholder didn’t come with him, maybe he could find one like it in an antique shop sometime.

As swiftly as seemed practical without undue risk of breaking his neck, he made his way down the stairs, through the gate, and along the road through the woods. 

Anticipation was starting to race through him.  Anticipation and hope that maybe, maybe his plan would work.  Maybe he would soon be home. 

The moon was fully gone by the time he reached the crossroad where the stagecoach passenger and guard lost their lives.  The gravel of the new road was light-colored and easy to see, even by just the starlight.  He jammed his hands into the pockets of his borrowed coat and started up the hill, willing himself not to accept being afraid.  Not to let himself dwell on the fear that his plan might not work.  That he might have no real chance of finding his way home.

The plan he’d come up with was to return to the spot he’d first found himself standing in, in this time.  To stand in that spot, and to be standing there at 10:30 at night, hoping that the hour and minutes themselves might do something to re-open whatever door had opened and brought him here.

He had no idea if the hour and minutes meant anything, or if 10:30 on November 17 in 1795 had any cosmic connection to 10:30 on November 17 in 1967.  Maybe he needed to stand here, instead, when it was 10:30 in 1967.  Well, if this didn’t work, that was what he’d try next.  All the more reason for him to make absolutely Christly certain he didn’t let his watch run down.

He was pretty sure he had found the right spot of road.  He remembered one particular smallish boulder at the roadside that he had noticed when he first realized he was standing there at all. 

He thought of Miss Hoffman telling all of them to concentrate on Sarah, to fix her image in their minds, to clear their minds of everything but her.

Well, now he would fix Liz’s image in his mind.  He had plenty of experience, when it came to thinking of nothing but her.

Bill Malloy stood on the road to Collinwood, in the starlight, picturing his wife’s face.  Picturing everything about her.  Hearing her voice, smelling her perfume, casting aside all thought of anything else in the world.

As 10:30 drew near he tried thinking himself back into the drawing room at Collinwood.  Back to his seat at the octagonal table, surrounded by the one candle’s light and shadows.  Back to Liz’s hand touching his, to the right of him, and Miss Hoffman’s hand at his left.

He pictured it so vividly that from moment to moment he almost believed it had worked.  The hour and moment he’d been waiting for ticked past, but he did not dare stop.  He could not take the risk of giving up hope. 

He thought he could not endure giving up.  But single-minded metaphysical transcendence could only hold off reality for so long.

It had to be 11:00 and past.  And he was still standing there, in the cold, on a newly-built road constructed a century and more before he was born. 

“I’m not leaving yet,” he promised himself.  He didn’t think he had anything to lose at this point, except for a few hours’ sleep.

How did he know that the hour of 10:30 had anything to do with anything?  For all he knew, he might get swept back into 1967 at any time when he was standing here.

So he stood there, and to stave off boredom and despair, he quietly started to sing.

            _What do you do with the drunken sailor_

_What do you do with the_ _drunken sailor_  

            _What do you do with the drunken sailor_

_Early in the morning?_

_Hooray, and up she rises,_

_Hooray, and up she rises,_

_Hooray, and up she rises,_

_Early in the morning._

_Put him in the longboat, let him bail her_

_Put him in the longboat, let him bail her_

_Put him in the longboat, let him bail her_

_Early in the morning._

An owl hooted at him a few times, and Bill wondered if the hoots were accompaniment or complaint.  Bill watched the stars, and he sang.

             _What do you do with the drunken soldier_

_What do you do with the drunken soldier_

_What do you do with the drunken soldier_

_Early in the morning?_

_Put him in the guardroom till he’s sober_

_Put him in the guardroom till he’s sober_

_Put him in the guardroom till he’s sober_

_Early in the morning._

_Hooray, and up she rises,_

_Hooray, and up she rises,_

_Hooray, and up she rises,_

_Early in the morning._

He knew that probably every man he’d ever sailed with believed that Bill Malloy could sing that song forever.  Tonight was the night he would put that belief to the test.  He stood there, and as the night crept on, quietly he kept on singing.

It _was_ early in the morning by the time he finally stopped.  Midnight had come and gone.  He bit his lip and he closed his eyes as he fought away the grief that twisted through him.  Then he ordered himself, _All right, now, Bill.  Time to sneak back into Collins House and try to get some sleep._

He would not have noticed what was lying near the roadside if the breeze hadn’t started up.  Standing there for one last moment before making himself walk away, he heard the faint rustling of a book’s pages being gently turned by the wind.

He left the road and walked around the small boulder that he had used for his landmark.

On the other side of that rock was a book, lying open in the grass.  It was a massive volume that he had no difficulty in recognizing, even in only the starlight.

_The Collins family history._

As he knelt by it to pick it up, he saw the page to which the wind kept turning it.  The pages kept fluttering and dancing as the breeze caught them.  But at every lull, the book lay open to that page.

To the page with the portrait of Sarah Collins.

Bill closed the book.  Some instinct made him stash it inside his borrowed greatcoat, holding it in place there between his chest and his arm.  There didn’t seem any reason not to carry the book normally, he thought as he started back toward the crossroad.  He hadn’t run into anyone when he left.  Why should he be overly concerned that he’d meet someone on the way back in? 

All the same, he wasn’t going to fight against that instinct.  He kept the Collins history safely hidden inside the coat, while he hurried between the poplars along the road to Collins House.

He had climbed the garden stairs once more and was heading for the house itself, when a voice from just ahead of him growled, “Who are you?  What are you doing out here?”

Sudden light blazed at Bill’s eyes.  Someone right in front of him was holding up a lantern.  He guessed the lantern must have a door on it that could conceal its light.  Whoever was holding the lantern had waited to open it until Bill was just about on top of him.      

The man with the lantern moved it slightly to one side, and suddenly Bill could see his face.

It was a face he knew.  And it sent sick, brutal fear pounding through him.

He choked out the name, “Matthew Morgan!”


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An encounter in 1795 brings back memories of that fatal night on Lookout Point. Features Bill Malloy, Ben Stokes, and, in flashback, Matthew Morgan, Burke Devlin, Roger Collins, Sheriff Jonas Carter, Sam Evans, Liz Stoddard, Caroyn Stoddard, Vicki Winters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In our current campaign of watching DS, we haven’t yet reached the episodes in which it is finally revealed what happened to Bill Malloy. (We’re just at the point where Vicki has found that dratted pen on the beach!) I tried to make sure that this chapter’s account of the encounter on Lookout Point fit in (more or less!) with the canon version as I understand it from Dark Shadows Wiki episode summaries etc., but it certainly may diverge at various points. Of course, it definitely diverges at one very crucial point!
> 
> I have also altered the timeline slightly to have Sheriff Jonas Carter (remember him, early DS watchers?) still be the sheriff at the time of that encounter, rather than George Patterson holding that office. I liked Sheriff (former Constable) Carter in those episodes in which he appeared, and wished there’d been some sort of explanation for why he’s suddenly gone and George (who is a darling, too, of course) is there. I guess one could just about argue that what I’m saying happened here, is the case – perhaps Carter was the lame duck sheriff when poor Bill Malloy met his fate, and Patterson (perhaps a deputy of Carter’s) was about to take office, and so that’s why he was the one who turned up to investigate the disappearance of Mr. Malloy (and why Liz felt she had to introduce him to Roger: “You remember Sheriff Patterson?”). Anyway, included here is my take on how Jonas Carter left office as Sheriff of Collins County.

**Chapter Four**

**_My name is Bill Malloy._ **

**_Time has been suspended at the great house of Collinwood.  A man has been thrown backward in time to the year 1795.  He has begun to meet the Collins family of that time: people who until that day he knew only as ancient history or as ghosts._ **

**_But tonight he will meet something else: a terrible memory from the shadows of his own past._ **

 

The man holding the lantern repeated suspiciously, “Matthew Morgan?  I don’t know anyone by that name.  My name is Ben Stokes.”

_Breathe,_ Bill ordered himself.  _Don’t panic.  He’s not Matthew Morgan, and he’s not here to kill you._

So what if this man _did_ look like the Collinwood groundskeeper whom Bill had thought of as his friend, until a certain encounter one night on Lookout Point.  Maybe the two men were related to each other.  Stokes was another old Collinsport name.  Bill didn’t know of the Stokes and Morgan families being related, but there was no reason why they shouldn’t be.  He wasn’t an expert on either of their family trees.

“I – apologize,” Bill said.  “You reminded me of … of someone I thought I might know.”

_Because, of course, I’m supposed to have amnesia, and I just about tripped myself up in my own God-damn lie._

Clearly Ben Stokes had heard the story of the mysterious amnesiac guest that Jeremiah Collins had welcomed into the house.  He nodded slowly and said, “Someone you thought you might know, eh?  I know who you are.  You’re the gentleman what’s lost his memory.  Funny how you don’t know who you are or how you got here, but you remember names like Matthew Morgan and Bill Malloy.”

_Ay-yuh.  Funny._ Bill tried to make the best of it.  “I don’t know how the memory works.  Maybe names are what it keeps hold of the strongest.”

“Maybe.”  From his expression and his tone of voice, Stokes was significantly less than impressed.  “What are you doing wandering around at night, Mr. gentleman-what’s-lost-his-memory?”

Any story he might tell would be bound to sound insane.  Bill figured he would be better off if the tale he told was at least somewhat close to the truth.  He said, “I went back to the first place I remember.  On the new road.  I hoped just being there would bring back some memory.”

“Did you have any luck?”

“No.”

“Too bad,” said Ben Stokes, in what was just about the most unsympathetic tone imaginable.  “You’d better get back inside to your bed, Mr. Malloy.  Might not be safe for you to be out here at night.”

“Why not?” Bill asked.  As shaken as he was and as much as wanted to get away from this man, he couldn’t quite resist putting a challenge into his voice. 

Stokes shrugged.  “Haven’t been any reports of wolves being sighted right around here lately.  But I did hear they shot one over to Logansport just last week.  Never know what might be out there in those woods.  And someone could take you for an intruder.  Joshua Collins don’t take kindly to people prowling about his place.”

“Thanks,” said Bill.  “I’ll remember that.”  Since Ben Stokes didn’t seem to have any more not-quite-veiled threats he wanted to deliver, Bill said, “Good night, Mr. Stokes.”

“Good night, Mr. Malloy.  Sleep tight.”

Bill made it to the house and in through the front door without breaking into a run, but only by a massive exercise of will power.  All the way to the door he had imagined he felt Ben Stokes’ hostile gaze boring into him. 

But of course it wasn’t Ben Stokes’ gaze that was bothering him.  It was the gaze of Matthew Morgan, grinning at him from his home in the depths of Bill’s memory.

Bill thought, _It might almost be worth having amnesia, if I could forget about Matthew._

It wouldn’t be worth it, of course.  Since he would also have to forget about Liz.

All the same, his skin felt clammy and his heartbeat was racing as he walked up the stairs to his room in the dark.

He took out the Collins family history book and placed it, by feel, on the table next to the bed.  He hung up Jeremiah Collins’ greatcoat behind the door.  And then it took him a few minutes more of sitting on the bed, willing himself into calmness, before his hands grew steady enough for him to put the tinderbox to use and light the candle.

_Sleep tight,_ he thought.  _Thank you so much for that, Mr. Stokes.  No chance of me sleeping tight, now that I’ve had a surprise run-in with a Matthew Morgan look-alike._

The man wasn’t _really_ a look-alike for Matthew, of course.  Bill told himself there was probably less resemblance between this Stokes and Matthew than there was between Jeremiah Collins and Burke Devlin.  For one thing, Ben Stokes looked at least a decade younger than Matthew had been when he died.  Stokes’ hair was fairly short and straight, not the mop-like mess that Matthew’s had always been.  And his eyebrows were perfectly normal, not like the luxuriant growths Matthew had sported.

They had similar faces, similar builds, and there’d been a similar sound to their voices.  But as far as the voice went, Bill figured this Stokes was probably some sort of groundskeeper for the Collinses, just like Matthew had been.  That particular brand of threatening monotone voice was part of the job description for groundskeepers.  It was their stock-in-trade for intimidating potential troublemakers found prowling the grounds at night.

Bill wondered if this Stokes was an ancestor of the Stokes family he knew in his own Collinsport.  Probably he was.  Back in high school one summer, Bill had earned some pocket money babysitting little Elliot Stokes – who wasn’t little at all anymore, and who the last Bill had heard, was teaching philosophy or something like that at the college in Bangor.  Come to think of it, Elliot looked a bit like this Stokes – and, by extension, a bit like Matthew Morgan, too.

He wouldn’t go into a tailspin of fear if he ran into Elliot Stokes, would he?  Then why the hell couldn’t he make himself calm down now?

Bill got to his feet and started pacing.

He _knew_ he ought to get to sleep.  Since his plan hadn’t succeeded, what he needed now was enough rest to have a fighting chance of achieving something tomorrow.

But getting to sleep was going to be very much easier said than done.  The encounter with Stokes had sent his instincts into full fight-or-flight.

He told himself, _You are a ridiculous man, Bill Malloy_. 

_You’ve gone back in time.  You have_ gone back in time _to the year 1795 and you don’t know how to get home again, and all you’re worried about is running into a man who looks like Matthew Morgan?_

It was ridiculous and he knew it.  But he didn’t stop pacing.

He needed to get some sleep.  Either that or he should put some serious thought, again, into the question of how to get back home.

Instead his mind kept on replaying the events of a January night when Death had grinned at him and fastened its fingers on his throat.

 

* * *

 

He had been pacing then, too.  Pacing back and forth along Lookout Point.  With every moment that passed he grew angrier at Roger Collins. 

Just half an hour before, he’d thought he couldn’t _get_ any angrier with Roger.  Now he was proving that wrong.

Bill had thought, _Where the hell is he?  If he’s stood me up for this meeting, he’s lost his last chance._

He had taken his watch out and scowled at it.  It had been hard to tell in the cloud-obscured moonlight, but he’d thought it probably said 10:42.

_He’s had time enough to get here by now.  He said he was leaving as soon as we hung up.  It shouldn’t have taken him more than ten minutes._

Bill had told himself, _I’ll stay till 10:45.  If he’s not here by then, I’m going on to his office.  And if the coward doesn’t turn up at_ that _meeting, by-the-Jesus I am going to hunt him down and I’ll drag him in to the sheriff’s office myself._

Then he’d heard footsteps, crunching through the patches of bearberry that poked up through the sand.

“You took your time getting here,” Bill had said.

In the next instant he’d realized that the footsteps sounded too heavy to be those of Roger Collins.  And the figure that he saw a moment later was too big to be Roger.  In the murky light, the man was almost on top of him before he recognized the perennial plaid shirt, bear-like build and stodgy face of Collinwood groundskeeper Matthew Morgan.

“What are you doing here, Matthew?” Bill asked.

There was enough light for him to see that Matthew answered him with a weird, almost threatening smile.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Matthew said.  “But I already know the answer.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know the answer to that.  You’re meeting Mr. Collins here.  You’re stirring up trouble for the Collins family.  Trouble they don’t need.”

Bill argued, “It’s not me stirring up the trouble.  I’m trying to keep it away from them.”

“Won’t work this way.  Miz Stoddard ain’t going to thank you for throwing her brother to the wolves.  You just let it alone, Bill.  I’m warning you.  You let it go.  Don’t keep digging up what’s past and gone.”

There was something different about Matthew Morgan’s voice tonight.  Something different and wrong.  The usual growling monotone had a new sound to it.  Tension and excitement trembled at the edges of his words.

“I can’t do that, Matthew,” Bill told him.  “The past isn’t gone this time.  It came back to town with Burke Devlin.  It’s going to haunt that family until he gets what he came here for.  Revenge.  Or the truth.”

“Don’t you worry about it, Bill.  I can stop Burke Devlin.”  Matthew’s face was a couple of inches from Bill’s.  The moonlight glinted in his eyes and on his teeth, as he bared them in a smile.  “You leave him to me.  I’ll see to it that he don’t keep on bothering Miz Stoddard and the rest of them.”

“Matthew, listen to me,” Bill said.  “Burke has the right to get the truth.  He has the right to justice.  That’s what Roger Collins owes to him.  Roger and no one else.  Nobody else in that family has to suffer, if Roger only does what’s right.”

“I’m sorry, Bill,” said Matthew Morgan.  His smile was suddenly gone.  “I gave you fair warning.  I warned you and you wouldn’t stop.”

His hands closed around Bill’s throat.

The sudden, blazing pressure hit like an explosion behind Bill’s eyes.  Bill scrabbled at the huge, meaty hands with his own hands.  He fought to gain enough purchase to be able to drag Matthew’s hands away.  He kicked and somehow managed to trip the other man, and they slammed down into the sand, Matthew on top of Bill and his hands still around Bill’s neck.

Somehow, somehow, he exerted enough force to loosen those fingers from around him.  Somehow he pushed those hands upward a fraction of an inch from his throat.

“Matthew,” he heard himself choke out, “stop!  We both love Elizabeth Stoddard.  We both want to help her.  Stop!”

“I asked you to stop, Bill.  You wouldn’t do it.  Now it’s up to me to stop you.”

The fingers dug in to him again.  Matthew Morgan seized hold of Bill’s neck, hauled him upward for a moment and then smashed his head down to the ground.

A new, blinding pain slammed into him from the back of his head.  He felt what had to be blood, hot and wet against his neck.

A rock.  His head had hit a rock, just under the sand.

When he thought about it later, Bill believed that in a strange way, that rock had saved his life.

If he’d hit it any harder – or if it had hit his head any more squarely, instead of glancing along the side, he would probably have died then and there.  Or at least he would be unconscious, and Matthew could just kick him off the edge of the cliff and have done with him.

But the blow from that rock was just hard enough to make him realize how very, very close he was to dying.

_I can’t die now!_ his thoughts screamed.

_I can’t die before all of this is finished._

_I can’t die and leave Liz behind._

Struggling, shoving, clawing, somehow he managed to make a fragment of the pressure ease away from him.

And then he heard Roger Collins’ voice, distant but growing closer.

“Hey!  You there!  Who’s there?  Stop it!  Stop it, I tell you!”

The sudden interruption jolted Matthew’s concentration.  And Bill was able to heave upward against him, breaking the grip of those fingers at last.

The force of Bill’s upward momentum threw Matthew off balance, knocking him into the sand. 

Bill was not in any kind of shape to go on the offensive.  Still he lurched at Matthew, barely knowing what he thought he could do, just knowing that he had to fight.  He had to stop the fingers from closing around him again.

Matthew’s hands were reaching for him.  Bill seized the man’s huge wrists.  He only knew he had to keep them away, keep those hands from closing on him.

“Stop, I say!” yelled Roger Collins.  “Damn you, both of you, stop!”

Bill felt Roger seizing him by the shoulder and by the collar of his coat.  He wanted to scream, “Don’t stop me, stop him!”  But he couldn’t force any words from his throat.

And then the ground was giving way.  Sand and brush went plummeting downward, in a landslide that tore away the edge of the cliff.

A landslide that took Matthew Morgan toppling down with it.

Bill would never forget the weird, twisting sound of Matthew’s scream.  Or the sound of its abrupt end.

He and Roger Collins were both lying there, both gasping, both of them with their heads hanging over the very brink of the cliff. 

Roger started scrabbling backwards.  He hauled on Bill’s collar to drag Bill back with him.  “Get back from there, you fool!” Roger was yelling, almost right in his ear.  “Bill, damn you, come back from there!”

Bill lay for a while like a dying fish, hearing the pounding of his blood and the strange, wheezing noise that had to be his own breathing.  When he struggled his way to a sitting position, he saw Roger sitting beside him, staring at him, eyes wide with horror.    

Bill Malloy croaked out, rubbing his neck as he spoke, “We have to get down there.”

“Get down there?” Roger Collins echoed.  “Are you out of your mind?”

“Go around.  To the beach.  By the path.  We have to find him.”

“You’re insane, Bill.”   Roger started to try and help Bill to his feet.  “You’re bleeding.  You’re bleeding quite heavily.  We need to get you to a doctor.”

“Not yet,” Bill insisted.  “Not until we find him.”

“You’re mad.”

Between them, Bill and Roger managed to get Bill’s feet beneath him again.  He was more-or-less standing on his own, with a little help from the sweetfern bushes that grew alongside the path, when Roger gave an infuriated little snort and told him, “Wait here.  I’ll go get the flashlight from my car.”

That gave Bill the time he needed to recover himself more.  By the time they started down the path to the beach, Roger and his flashlight leading the way, Bill could just about breathe like a human being again.  The soreness all around his neck had eased enough for him to really notice the throbbing at the back of his skull.

They found Matthew Morgan half-buried by the sand that had pulled him down.  A lot of the sand had trickled into his open mouth.  In the glare of Roger Collins’ flashlight, his staring eyes gleamed like silver.

Bill and Roger stood gazing at him, saying nothing. 

Bill didn’t know what he expected, or wanted, Roger Collins to say.  But as the moments plodded on and Roger still didn’t speak, Bill felt himself buoyed on a wave of bitter, overwhelming rage.

He turned to Roger and said, “We have something in common, now.”

Roger forced his gaze away from Matthew Morgan.  He cast Bill Malloy an impatient look.  “I beg your pardon?” he inquired in prim distaste.  He might have been standing in the drawing room at Collinwood with a drink in his hand.  Not on the beach at Lookout Point with a corpse at his feet.

“We’re both killers,” Bill snarled.  “We’ve both committed manslaughter.  Me tonight; you ten years ago, behind the wheel of a car.  Of course, I fought Matthew to defend my life.  You got behind the wheel drunk and you let another man go to prison for you.”

 For a brief moment Roger closed his eyes.  “Bill,” he murmured, “this has to stop.”

The brutal chuckle that Bill gave then hurt his throat.  “That’s what Matthew told me.  That’s what he was trying to do.  Stop me.  To save your hide.  Stop me to protect the sacred Collins name.  Stop me to save Liz from the shame of her little brother’s crime.”

Roger’s eyes looked as cold and implacable as the dead eyes of Matthew Morgan.  “Stop this, Bill.”

“It’s going to stop.  Tonight.”  Bill heard himself laughing again.  He wondered if either of them was actually sane.  “What are you going to do?  Are you going to try and kill me?  Do I get to have both of you trying to murder me in one night?  Go ahead, Roger.  Give it a whirl.  It’ll be your second killing.  I’m sure it only gets easier, after the first time.” 

“Bill,” Roger said, “I’m warning you.”

Bill grinned at him.  “That’s what Matthew said.  You should do it.  It’s the perfect opportunity. You’ll never have a better chance.  Grab a rock and pound my skull in.  Then you can run to Jonas Carter’s office.  Stand there in the sheriff’s office crying your crocodile tears.  Tell him you found the Collins family’s two most trusted servants locked in a death struggle at the edge of Lookout Point.  Tell him how even as you ran to us, the cliff gave way and we fell together to our doom.  Throw in some moving details of how you nearly lost your life trying to save us.  Then Liz and Carolyn can hug you and coddle you and tell you how brave you are.  And you can sleep soundly tonight in your snug little bed in Collinwood, knowing you’ve destroyed another life to keep yourself out of prison.  Secure in knowing that only the dead can recognize you for the pathetic coward you are.”

Again Roger Collins closed his eyes.  When he opened them, he stood there in silence.  Bill Malloy saw the gleam of tears, bright on Roger’s face in the moonlight.

Bill wondered if that crazy speech of his had made any difference, or if Roger was about to start swinging a rock at his head.

“I’m going to the sheriff’s office,” Bill said quietly.  “I’m going now.  Unless you kill me first.  I’m going to tell him about Matthew.  I’m going to tell him what happened and why.  I’m going to tell him _all_ about why it happened.” 

Roger said nothing.  There was nothing Bill could read from the distant look on Collins’ face.  He couldn’t tell if the look meant some kind of agreement, or if any second now he would again be fighting for his life.

Bill put a hand to the back of his head and prodded warily at the sticky, congealed mess of blood in his hair.

“You should come with me,” Bill went on.  He hoped if he just kept his voice quiet and calm, there _might_ be a better chance of Roger not trying to kill him.  “Jonas will need you to tell him what you saw here tonight.  And if you really want this to stop, you’ll tell him what happened ten years ago.”

Bill Malloy was honestly surprised when the two of them climbed back to the top of the path without Roger attempting to murder him.  He was surprised when they got to Roger’s car and Roger simply told him, “Get in; I’ll give you a ride to the sheriff’s office.”  He was surprised when Roger, in reply to Jonas Carter’s questions, gave an account of the fight which completely supported Bill’s testimony. 

“Surprised” could not begin to describe Bill Malloy’s emotions when Roger – while the back of Bill’s head was being cleaned and patched up by the tut-tutting Dr. Dennis Reeves – said in a polite and apparently untroubled tone, “Jonas, I’m afraid I’ll have to take up more of your time.  I need to speak with you about the manslaughter trial ten years ago.”

Sheriff Carter listened with little comment to Roger Collins’ plain, unvarnished confession – a confession that Roger made with Bill Malloy as the astonished audience. 

The sheriff’s deputies and an ambulance had been dispatched to Lookout Point.  When Deputy Shaw called in to report that Matthew Morgan was indeed dead, Sheriff Carter stood up and grabbed his hat and coat.  He said to Roger and Bill, “All right, gentlemen. I’m giving you both a ride to Collinwood.  You and a couple of friends of yours.”

The “couple of friends” were Burke Devlin and Sam Evans.  True to Bill’s original plan, they had been waiting since 11:00, twiddling their thumbs and going mad with impatience, at Roger’s office in the cannery.  When Bill and Roger first arrived at Sheriff Carter’s office, Bill had phoned them there and told them to wait where they were until further notice.  Carter stopped at the cannery to collect them.  The four men who had been due to meet in Roger’s office at 11:00 now had an uncomfortable ride up to Collinwood, crammed into Carter’s patrol car.  Burke kept demanding to be told what the hell was going on.  Jonas Carter repeatedly answered that he would just have to wait and see.  Sam Evans just made a few muttering comments about being squeezed in together like a can of Collins Enterprises sardines.   

Carter left his four passengers to cool their heels in the study, while he spoke in the drawing room with Elizabeth Collins Stoddard alone.  Bill knew the sheriff had to be telling her about Matthew’s death.  He buried his face in his hands.

_Matthew’s her friend,_ Bill thought.  _He’s her friend and she relies on him.  He’s been her friend for nearly as long as I have._

_Even when she knows what he did, what he tried to do – is there any way that she will ever forgive me?_

“You’ve got to tell us, Bill,” Burke interrupted his thoughts.  “What’s happened to you?  How did you hurt your head?  How did Jonas Carter get mixed up in this?”

Bleakly Bill answered, “Matthew Morgan is dead.”

“Morgan?” Sam Evans questioned, scowling in surprise.  “The caretaker?”

Bill rubbed his neck as he said, “He sure tried to take care of me tonight.”

Roger Collins was standing by the fireplace, gazing fixedly at the painting above it.  Burke and Sam kept on staring at Bill, waiting for the answers.  

“Roger phoned me and asked me to meet him at Lookout Point, before meeting you two.  Matthew must have overheard the phone call.  He got there before Roger did.  He told me to stop stirring up trouble for the Collinses.  He said I didn’t have to worry about you, Burke.  He’d take care of you himself.  When I told him I wouldn’t stop, he God-damn near strangled me to death.  And pounded my head on a rock.  Roger arrived and tried to pull us off each other.  That’s when the edge of the cliff collapsed.  Matthew fell to the beach.  Probably broke his neck.” 

While Burke and Sam were struggling to think of what to say, Sheriff Carter opened the door.  He announced, “Come along, gentlemen.  You’re all wanted in the drawing room.”

Assembled in the drawing room was every last resident of Collinwood – everyone except for David.  Carolyn and Miss Winters, wearing nightgowns and bathrobes, sat huddled together on the sofa.  Bill thought how beautiful Liz looked tonight, wearing a pale gray silk dressing gown, with her dark hair flowing free around her shoulders.  She stood near to the two girls.  Her hands were clasped together in front of her as Bill knew they so frequently were, when she clung with everything she had to the dignity she demanded of herself.  Her expression was set as he had so often seen it: calm, regal, emotionless.  But Bill knew he wasn’t imagining the storm of emotions he could see in her eyes.

For the first time since Bill had lectured him on Lookout Point beach, Roger Collins appeared to rebel against the course he had chosen for himself.  He turned to Sheriff Carter with a look of outrage.  “Do _they_ have to be here?” he demanded, with a nod of his head toward Carolyn and Miss Winters.

“Yes,” Carter said.  “I’m sure Mr. Devlin prefers we have as large an audience as possible.  Don’t you, Mr. Devlin?  Anyway, better get used to it, Mr. Collins.  When it goes to trial you’re going to have a lot bigger audience than this.”

“Trial!” gasped out Carolyn.  “Uncle Roger—”

“Be quiet, Carolyn,” Liz ordered.

“Go ahead, Mr. Collins,” said the sheriff.  “Tell your story.  Tell all of them what you told me in my office.”

Bitter anger gleamed in Roger’s gaze.  He took a few steps to the sideboard with its decanter of brandy, and looked at it for a moment.  Then he turned his back to the sideboard and faced the people who were watching him. 

Bill thought that he actually admired Roger for being able to summon up some of his old haughtiness now.  He supposed Roger had come to the conclusion that since he had to sink, he might as well sink with his head held high.

“Ten years ago,” Roger said, “Burke, Laura and I were driving home drunk.  Burke was driving, but I thought I was more in control of myself than he was.  I made him stop the car and get into the back seat.  I took the wheel.

“Shortly after that, the car hit a man.  I stopped for a moment, but when I saw he – must be dead, I drove on.  In the trial, Laura and I both testified that Burke was driving when the man was struck.  Our testimony sent him to prison.”

“Uncle Roger,” Carolyn pleaded, in a broken tone.  “No …”

Roger turned suddenly, with a venomous look, to Sam Evans.  “That isn’t the end of the story, though.  Is it, Evans?  Go ahead.  Tell all these lovely people.  Why should I let myself be crucified alone when you can be hanging up here next to me?”

Raw fear on his face, Sam muttered, “Collins—”

“Go ahead, Sam,” Bill Malloy told him then.  “It was going to come out tonight, anyway.  I made up my mind tonight wouldn’t end without _all_ of it coming out in the open.  Go ahead and tell it.  Maybe it’s the only way you can be free of what’s haunting you.”

There was still panic in Sam’s eyes, as he looked around seeking a means of escape.  But he finally said, “Yes.  Maybe it is.”

Sam Evans walked over to Roger Collins, as though accepting Roger’s invitation to be crucified next to him.  With as little emotion as possible, Sam said, “I was out on the road that night.  Out walking.  Trying to make sense of my thoughts.  Doesn’t matter what I was doing.  The point is, I saw it.  I saw the car come up the road, weaving all around.  I saw it hit the man.  I saw Roger stop the car.  And I saw Burke Devlin sitting in the back seat.”

Carolyn sobbed again, “No.”  She pulled away from Vicki Winters who was trying to hold her hand.  Carolyn jumped to her feet, but then stopped there by the sofa, seeming on the verge of flight but uncertain where to run.

Bill and Roger spoke at the same time.  Roger began, “Kitten,” holding out his hand to Carolyn.  At the same moment, Bill was saying, “Princess,” and starting toward her.

“No,” she ordered wildly.  “Both of you.  Stay away from me.”

Roger squared his shoulders and then aimed another vindictive smile at Sam Evans.  “Why don’t you tell the rest of it, Sam?  We don’t want to leave anything out.”

Sam glowered back at him.  “You look as bad in this as I do, Collins.  Probably worse.  Remember that.”  Fixing his gaze to some point on the carpet, he said, “I never testified in the trial because Roger paid me not to.  Roger Collins paid me $15,000 to keep quiet.  And Burke went to prison.”

“Uncle Roger,” hissed Carolyn.  “How could you?  How could you?”

She did run from the room then.  She yanked open the drawing room door so violently on her way out, Bill almost thought the door might be torn from its hinges.

“Miss Winters,” Liz said quietly.  “Will you please go after her?  Stay with her, if she’ll let you.”

“Yes, of course,” Vicki murmured.  She hastily followed Carolyn.

“Well,” said Sheriff Carter.  “That good enough for you, Mr. Devlin?  Satisfied?”

“Satisfied?” Burke repeated.  “Hardly.  It’s a start.”  He walked up to Roger Collins and planted himself in front of him.  “There are a few things I’d like to hear you say again.  Things I’ve imagined hearing you say for ten years.”

Icily, Roger stared at him.  “Damn you, Devlin.”

“You already did that,” Burke said, with his predatory grin.  “Humor me, Roger.  Let me hear you say it.  Let me hear you say, ‘I was driving.  I hit the man.  I killed him.’”

Hatred in his face and voice, Roger obeyed.  “I was driving.  I hit the man.  I killed him.”

“Just one more thing.  ‘I sent an innocent man to prison for five years.’  Say it!”

For a moment Bill wondered if Roger was going to collapse.  But he said it.  Staring into nothing, he said, “I sent an innocent man to prison for five years.”

The tension was still trembling in his voice, but Roger tried to recapture some of his usual style as he turned to Sheriff Carter.  “And now, sheriff, all of you, I hope you will excuse me.  I’m rather tired.  I hope you’ll forgive me for not providing you any more entertainment tonight.  Sheriff, I am at your disposal at any time, of course.  I’ll get a ride down to your office tomorrow to pick up my car, if you haven’t arrested me by that time.”

Roger Collins strode from the room.

“Well,” said Sheriff Carter, briskly rubbing his hands.  “I hope everyone enjoyed that.  Now let me have the floor.”  Looking challengingly at all of them, he said, “All of you know I’m retiring at the end of the month.  January 31st is the day I turn in my badge.  And I don’t mind saying, stories like this one make me damn glad to know that in two weeks from now, this kind of thing is not going to be my problem.

“As far as I’m concerned, I didn’t hear any of this.  I’ve been busy tonight dealing with Matthew Morgan’s death.  What happens with all of _this_ is up to you.  In two weeks, when George Patterson takes office, you can tell it to him.  Roger can go in and confess again, if he wants to.  You can file charges if you want to, Mr. Devlin.  You’re all free to handle this any way you choose.  So long as nobody else winds up dead.”  He touched his uniform cap politely to all of them and added, “I’m going to stop by the hospital and then go write my report on Mr. Morgan.  I hope all of you have a good night.”

* * *

 

Gradually Bill Malloy climbed out from the well of memories that his meeting with Stokes had thrown him into.  His pacing slowed and finally stopped.

He sighed, rubbed his hands over his face, and walked over to the jug of water on the dresser.  He poured some water into the basin and splashed it over his face.

The water was cold enough to sting.  He’d read in some historical novel or something, or maybe he’d seen it in a movie, that sometimes in the old days people had to break the ice on the surface of their wash water when they got up in the morning.  Luckily, it looked like it wasn’t going to get quite that cold at Collins House on this night in 1795.

There was an earthenware cup next to the basin and jug.  Only a little dubiously, Bill poured himself a drink of the water and took a sip.

It tasted a little earthy, without the fluoridation he was used to in the regular Collinsport tap water.   _Isn’t there some saying,_ he thought, _about the past being a foreign country?  I hope it isn’t one of those countries where you aren’t supposed to drink the water._

Well, if he was going to worry about things like that, he would drive himself mad before morning.  Probably this water wasn’t any different from the well water Bill used to drink around here when he was a kid.  It hadn’t killed him then, and he would just have to trust that it wouldn’t kill him now.

Bill had to smile a little as he thought back to how Jonas Carter had stage-managed that scene in Collinwood’s drawing room.  The results of that little showdown convinced Bill that ex-sheriff Carter was a genius when it came to judging character and predicting people’s actions.  Carter’s actions that night had saved the expense of a court case, spared Collinsport months of factional squabbling, rescued Collins Enterprises from the threat of hostile takeover – although Bill did feel that his own actions also had something to do with that rescue – and incidentally, had kept Roger Collins out of prison.  Not to mention setting Sam Evans free from the demon of guilt that had been gnawing him, freeing Burke Devlin from the equally powerful demon of revenge, and setting the stage for the Collinses and Devlin to become – almost – one big, nearly happy family.

It had taken Burke only a couple of days to make his way around to really giving up on his revenge.  As he had said to Bill two nights after the scene at Collinwood, while going through a goodly number of whiskeys at the Blue Whale, “I thought I wanted to see Roger Collins rot in prison.  But people like him rot wherever they are.”

Who would have thought, back there on that night in January, that not even a year later Liz would offer to give Vicki and Burke the West Wing of Collinwood, for them to restore and live in after their wedding?

And then Burke had to take that damned business trip to Brazil.

Bill swigged down the rest of the only-slightly-suspect cup of water and decided it was time for him to try out an 18th-century bed.  He took off his jacket and his shoes, then unhooked his watch and set it down on the Collins family history book.  It was too danged cold to bother taking anything else off.  Although the famous bed-warmer was still doing something, even hours after being put in place.  At least he would have warm toes.

And he supposed he was hoping that whatever power controlled this time travel malarkey might just grab him up while he was in bed and deposit him back in 1967.  In which case, he would prefer not to be in either just his undershorts and undershirt, or in whatever 18th-century nightclothes Jeremiah Collins might have loaned him, when that happened.

Bill thought, “ _And he woke up and realized it had all been just a dream.”_  

_No such luck, probably.  I guess a man can always hope._

He only hesitated briefly before snuffing out the candle.  He told himself that if he was going to have visions of Matthew Morgan, he would see them just as clearly in the light as he would in the dark.

It had been stupid to let himself get so worked up over that encounter with Ben Stokes.  He told himself it must have been the surprise of it all that had made tonight so bad.  The shock of seeing a man who looked so like Matthew suddenly appearing at him out of the darkness.

Most of the time, he was at peace with his memories of Matthew – most of those memories – or at least, he thought he was.  It wasn’t as though he walked around jumping at shadows or going into shellshock every time he saw something that reminded him of Matthew Morgan.

He would be in trouble if he did, considering that he and Matthew had grown up together in Collinsport.  They’d gone to school together, worked together on the boats, and Matthew had worked as groundskeeper and caretaker at Collinwood for 18 years.  Bill wouldn’t be able to get through even one hour of his day-to-day life without running into _something_ that made him think of Matthew.

_I’m sorry, Matthew,_ Bill thought now.  _I’m sorry you ended up dead.  I’m sorry you died in a fight that didn’t need to happen._

_Damn it, Matthew!  We were on the same side!  We were both fighting to help Liz._

_Except I tried to help her by getting people to talk to each other.  You tried to help her by going around killing people._

Bill sighed and thought, _We should have paid more attention to him.  Over all those years of working with him, I should have_ noticed _him more.  I shouldn’t have let myself get into the habit of just thinking of him as Matthew the faithful old caretaker._

_Of all people, I should know better than to think that because a man’s cast himself as the faithful servant, there aren’t more complicated things going on inside of him._

_Somewhere in all those years, I should have seen he was sailing into waters nobody should venture into.  I should have seen he was sailing out too far and might not be able to steer his way back._

Bill hated remembering Matthew as he had been that night on Lookout Point.  He wanted to remember all the other Matthew Morgans, instead. 

The serious, quiet kid a few years behind Bill in school, who just managed to keep his grades up high enough to retain his place on the football team.  The novice sailor that Bill – from the lofty height of his five years’ work experience – had taken under his wing when Matthew first started work on the boats.  The happy, idealistic man who had said when Liz first hired him as groundskeeper, “Miz Stoddard’s given me a chance.  A real chance to do something worthwhile with my life.  I’m never going to let her down, Bill.  Never.”

He wanted to remember all of those Matthews.  Not to remember that grin or the feel of those fingers on his neck.

Bill Malloy thought, _Some people say everything happens for a reason.  They say it all works out for the best.  Well, I’m not any too danged sure about that.  It didn’t work out for the best for Matthew._

But he couldn’t deny being glad that things had not worked out the other way.  He couldn’t deny being as grateful as hell that he was still alive.

The few times he had fallen into the trap of imagining that things had gone differently –  of thinking how he could have been the one lying dead there at Lookout Point – well, those times just confirmed that it was a very bad idea for him to think about it.

To think of how easily he could have died … to think how he might have died before he and Liz married, without ever finding what they had found together …

When he did make the mistake of thinking about it, he wanted to disappear into the Blue Whale and not emerge again until he was so many sheets to the wind that he had to phone Carolyn and ask her to come give him a ride home.  And the thought of how Liz would look at him if _that_ ever happened was so damned horrible, it just proved the only thing for him to do was never, never to think about it.

Maybe he couldn’t accept that things always work out for the best.  But it occurred to him, as he lay there thinking of it now, that one could almost look at that January night in that light – if it weren’t for Matthew’s death.  One could just about see all of it as fitting together in some neatly arranged plan. 

Bill investigated Burke’s accusations against Roger Collins, and got so depressed in the process that everyone in town must have known something was wrong with him.  Matthew Morgan overheard one or more of the multiple times Bill yelled at Roger about it, and put two and two together to figure out what Bill was up to.  Matthew tried to murder Bill to stop his investigations.  The shock of that fight and of Matthew’s death propelled Roger into the confession he would otherwise have fought tooth and nail to avoid.  Roger’s confession in front of his family and the sheriff convinced Burke Devlin to give up his campaign of revenge, which otherwise he might have carried on until Collins Enterprises was destroyed.  And hey, presto!  Once Carolyn forgave Uncle Roger and everyone simmered down a bit, there you had it: a nice, neat happy ending.  Except not for Matthew Morgan.

And except for the fact that for Burke and Vicki, their happiness lasted just a few months.

_But that’s life, isn’t it?  “Happily Ever After” never really means forever._

Bill didn’t know which possibility he found more depressing. 

The idea that the whole thing had been part of some divine plan which just happened to involve sacrificing Matthew’s life? 

Or the notion that it was all just sheer, brutal chance, and only the roll of the dice determined whether Matthew Morgan or Bill Malloy would lie dead on Lookout Point.

Bill told himself, _Never mind about divine plans.  You don’t need to try and solve the question of whether God exists – and if so, what kind of a character He is._

_Never mind about God.  But what about what’s happening now?  What about me getting thrown into 1795?_

_Was_ this _somebody’s plan?  Is there some purpose behind it?_

_Or is it all just an accident?  Am I here simply by chance, because I was stupid enough to stand up and break that damned circle?_

He thought back to what Vicki as the ghost of Sarah had been saying right before the end. 

She had been saying that she didn’t want to go to bed.  Then she begged someone not to take away the light. 

But before that … before that, in answer to Roger’s questions, she had said something about why she came to David.  She said she came to tell him something.  Something about “how it all began.”

_How it all began.  How_ what _all began?_

The problem, he supposed.  Whatever the problem was.  Whatever had led to the dead supposedly being angry.  To them wanting to destroy someone at Collinwood in 1967.

_So, then, is this when it all began?  It began with something that happened here at Collins House, in November of 1795?_

It would make some kind of sense – as much as any of this made sense. 

Sarah had been talking of how it began.  The Collins family history book had been open to her portrait.  Bill had broken the circle and had accidentally put his hand down on the book …

 And got pulled back to whatever moment the ghost of Sarah was reliving.

But, damn it, was it all an accident?  Was it just a case of him falling through a door that had happened to be open?

Or did the ghost of Sarah want him to be here?  Did she think this was the best way to tell them “how it all began,” as Roger had begged her to?

_And am I here just to see how it began?  Or is there something I’m supposed to_ do?

Of all the possibilities he’d come up with, he thought that the accident theory was the worst.  Because if it was just an accident – if he was here through a stupid mistake and bad luck – how could he hope to recreate the exact circumstances that brought him here?  How could he hope to get back?

How could he ever hope to find his way home again?

But if he was here for some purpose, at least there might be a chance.  There might be a chance that he could learn “how it all began,” and he could do something about it – whatever “it” was. 

Maybe he could fix something.  Maybe he could change something. 

And then perhaps whatever power had brought him here would help him find his way home. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bill deals with Collinses, Collinsport and a countess

**Chapter Five**

**_My name is Bill Malloy._ **

**_Time has been suspended at the great house on Widow’s Hill. A man who has journeyed back in time to the year 1795 now lives at the other house on the estate – in a house he knew as the Old House, with the ancestors of the woman he loves. He seeks a way of returning to the present. And he seeks to understand the words of a ghost who spoke of the time “when it all began.”_ **

Bill Malloy woke up to find that it was raining. That was no surprise. Waking to the sound of rain on the windows was an ordinary experience at Collinwood. It took him several more moments before his memory caught up with reality.

_Oh, God,_ he thought. _I’m still in 1795._

The murky light filtering in through the window was good enough to see by. He picked up his watch from on top of the Collins family history book. Almost 3:30 in the afternoon, 1967 time. A quick mental translation told him the time was around 8:00 in the morning here.

_I’ve overslept,_ he thought. _Come on, Bill. Up and at ’em._

He wasn’t sorry to get off of that mattress, anyway. Here and there bits of straw poked through the fabric, but that didn’t bother him nearly as much as the evidence that at least a few bugs made their home in the bed. He itched in several places. Checking his right wrist showed him a collection of little red spots that were almost certainly flea bites.

He didn’t think the mattress was _too_ thoroughly infested, since he hadn’t been completely devoured.   _I’m probably lucky if it is just fleas,_ he thought. _I guess I can hope that the bedbugs and the lice don’t turn up soon, too._

Bill availed himself of the chamber pot, gingerly washed his hands and face in the stinging cold water that at least had the decency not to have frozen overnight, and cast a sour glance at his reflection in the dresser mirror. He tried not to let himself feel too forlorn at the thought of all the little everyday rituals of waking up and starting the day which he had done yesterday morning, and he could not do today.

Scratching his face around the outlines of his beard, Bill thought, _I wish I’d managed to bring my shaving kit with me._ He could probably get through today without looking too disgraceful. If he was here any longer than that, he would definitely need to get hold of a razor. And shaving soap. And a toothbrush and toothpaste.  

_Do they even_ have _toothbrushes and toothpaste in 1795?_

_I’m telling you,_ Bill thought. _Anybody who talks about the romance of the past needs to give time travel a try._

He hated the thought of giving up his own clothes. But he knew it had to be done. He couldn’t keep traipsing around this time period in an outfit that branded him as either a foreigner – a very foreign foreigner – or a madman. So that, of course, meant he had to look inside those chests from Jeremiah Collins and figure out what in the heck was what.

Fortunately, most of the items he discovered seemed relatively self-explanatory. And this stuff wasn’t _too_ dauntingly alien from the men’s clothing he was used to. He guessed he should count himself lucky he hadn’t been sent to some era when men wore things like tunics, tights and codpieces.

Self-explanatory or not, Bill decided he would use the bed to lay out at least one example of each type of clothing he found. That way he could fit it all together like a jigsaw puzzle. It was the best means he could see of making sure he assembled a complete outfit.

Shirts: check. Frock coats, or whatever this clothing item was supposed to be called: check, and then some. The brown coat he found first was followed by others in beige, black, green, and gray, of various degree of shininess. He discovered that each of the coats came with its own matching vest and pair of knee britches.

Only the brown vest was unadorned. The rest of them sported a fetching array of embroidered flowers and birds or wallpaper-like stripes.

_What a treat I’m going to look,_ Bill thought. _Why isn’t Cousin Barnabas around to give me fashion advice when I need him?_

In addition to the britches that went with the coats and vests, he found several thinner, white pairs of britches that were probably made out of linen.   He guessed they had to be underdrawers. Not too different a concept from his dad and grand-dad’s longjohns, he supposed.   For a moment he toyed with the idea of retaining his own undershorts. But he knew he needed to just do this thing whole hog. _When in Rome,_ he reminded himself.

The remaining contents of the chests were a couple of voluminous nightshirts, a profusion of neckerchiefs and cravats that Bill knew he would have the devil’s own time tying, several pairs of long, thick white socks, and two odd little leather items with buckles, that looked like miniature belts. Or else they were dog collars. He picked up one of the leather things and eyed it warily, wondering, _Are they sleeve garters or sock garters?_

He told himself the answer would probably become obvious once he was wearing the rest of the outfit. Bill thought, _No point in putting it off any longer._

The beige coat and knee britches were the least shiny of the bunch, and the brown vest was the only one without birds, flowers or stripes. He knew that not _every_ man in 1795 Collinsport was wearing a matching three-piece suit. Barnabas, after all, had his red-and-green Christmas ensemble. And the outfit Bill remembered Mr. Fowle the construction foreman wearing yesterday was something along the lines of a brown coat, black britches, and a green vest.

_Things aren’t as bad as they could be,_ Bill told himself. _At least I should be able to avoid wearing stripes, birds or flowers._

Bill Malloy got himself dressed with only a small amount of fumbling and swearing. He was sure he’d made an absolute hash of tying the cravat. Cousin Barnabas had given Bill a cravat-tying tutorial before that costume party of his, but when he actually got dressed for the party, he’d had both Liz and Carolyn helping out with the cravat. As for the little leather things, Bill decided they had to be sock garters as soon as one of the shapeless and non-fitted socks started creeping down his shin.

Riggs the butler had fulfilled Jeremiah’s order to find Bill some footwear, presumably scrounged together from the wardrobes of one or two Collins servants. Placed near the door were a pair of low, rather scuffed brown shoes, and a tall brown-and-tan pair of boots. The boots made more sense to wear today in the rain, Bill decided. They would also disguise his mistake if he had made any errors in fastening the sock garters.

The boots fit well enough once Bill got over his surprise at finding there was no distinction between the left foot and the right.

He cast a grim glance into the dresser mirror.

_You’re a sight for sore eyes, Bill,_ he thought.

_If the boys at the cannery could only see me now!_

One discovery that Bill was happy to make was that 18th-century vests had pockets. He transferred his watch and his knife to the pockets of the brown vest. As he was putting away his own clothes in the top dresser drawer, he suddenly realized he should hide the Collins family history book.

_Who knows how many of the household staff will be in and out of here today,_ he thought. _I can’t let them find a book that won’t be published for 160-something-odd years!_

He didn’t think it would be good enough just to put the book in the dresser. If anyone wanted to snoop around his room, that was probably the first place they’d look. And the chests of clothes might get taken back to Jeremiah Collins, so he couldn’t stash the book in there.  

The dresser was standing on spindly little carved legs. Bill knelt down to examine the floor beneath it, wishing he’d thought to do this when he was still wearing his own clothes. They definitely allowed for more freedom of movement. One of the floorboards down there, he thought, should be easy enough to pry up. He took out his Swiss army knife and started to work with its screwdriver at prying loose the floorboard’s nails.

_Sorry for any damage to your ancestral house, dear family,_ Bill thought. _When I get home, I’ll pay for Cousin Barnabas to have this floorboard restored, if he wants._

As he’d hoped, with the board pulled up he created a convenient hiding place between the joists in the space separating the floor of his room and the ceiling of the room below. He maneuvered the massive book into it. After another moment’s thought Bill took out his wallet from the pocket of his 1967 pants and placed it on top of the book.

With the board replaced and the nails back in their holes, he thought his secret cubbyhole was reasonably well concealed. It wouldn’t stand up to a really determined search. But hopefully these Collinses weren’t paranoid enough to investigate the floorboards for secrets their guests might have stashed.

_Time to go, Bill,_ he thought. _Time to make your debut as a man of 1795._

He encountered no one until he reached the bottom of the stairs. At that point the butler Riggs emerged from the depths of the house. Riggs gave a minimal bow and said, “Good morning, sir. What will you take for breakfast?”

Bill thought, _I have no idea._

_What do people eat for breakfast in the 18 th century?_

He decided to take the plunge and assume that _some_ things wouldn’t have changed in 172 years. If he did try to order some breakfast item that didn’t exist yet, it probably wouldn’t make Riggs think him any more peculiar than Bill’s clothing already had, yesterday.

So Bill took a gamble with, “Some oatmeal and coffee, if you please.”

Riggs didn’t turn a hair. “Porridge and coffee? Certainly, sir. The dining room is just through here,” he continued, gesturing to the door beside the parlor fireplace.

The dining room was one of the rooms of the Old House that hadn’t been restored yet by the time Willie Loomis was revealed as an insane abductor and probable killer, and was carted off to the funny farm. Now Bill got an eyeful of how it was supposed to look. He thought Cousin Barnabas had a real uphill battle ahead of him if he planned to fix up this room without Loomis’ help. Every bit of woodwork was painted either white or gold, and the chandelier looked like something that should be crushing unfortunate theater-goers in _The Phantom of the Opera_. Even on a rainy day like today, the room almost made him want to squint. By sunlight, or with all of those candles in the chandelier lit up, it must just about hurt to look at it.

Riggs had hastened through into the kitchen wing of the house, but Bill didn’t have long to contemplate the dining room in solitude. He was just wondering how many thousands of pieces that chandelier might be lying in, in 1967, when a woman’s voice said disapprovingly, “So you are the stranger my brother saw fit to welcome into our house.”

Bill turned toward the door from the parlor, to encounter yet another doppelganger for someone in his own Collinsport. The woman, wearing a brown velvet dress and a hat that looked like a doily, was a dead ringer for Sarah Johnson.

Well, almost a dead ringer. He thought this woman’s hair was slightly lighter in color, and she was probably a bit shorter than Sarah. Her face had an unhealthy pallor as if she took good care never to go outside in the sunshine. It was no surprise, when he glanced down at the woman’s hands, to see that they looked white, soft and pristine, unlike the work-roughened hands of Mrs. Johnson. Bill thought that this woman had clearly never done an honest day’s work in her life.

But the two women’s resemblance was definitely uncanny. Bill thought, _For heaven’s sake. Is Sarah Johnson descended from the Collinses, too?_

_Collinsport must be even more inbred than I thought. Apparently we’ve only got about twelve basic facial types to choose from in the whole town!_

The woman demanded, with a tasting-a-lemon sour look, “May I inquire why you are staring at me?”

“I beg your pardon,” Bill managed. “I – thought for a moment I might recognize you.”

“I am happy to say that you do not,” she told him primly, “since I have never set eyes on you before.”

“Good morning, Abigail,” Jeremiah Collins said in cheerful tones as he strolled in from the parlor. “I see you are making our guest feel welcome.”

The woman, apparently Abigail, rounded on him. “I am surprised at you,” she said, “although heaven knows, by now nothing you do should surprise me. That you should take advantage of our brother retiring early with his gout last night, to invite a nameless stranger to make free with our house without so much as a by-your-leave to the head of the family—”

“He isn’t nameless,” Jeremiah said easily. “His name is Bill Malloy. And just to set your mind at ease, sweet sister, I have already talked with the head of the family this morning and have received his approval for my invitation. Joshua at least understands the duty of hospitality, which apparently is one of our mother’s lessons that was lost on you.”

Abigail Collins gave a haughty sniff. “One of her lessons that was not lost on me is that we must stamp out evil wherever it presents its face.”

Jeremiah looked incredulous – which was pretty much the way Bill felt, himself. Jeremiah observed, “You’ve moved awfully swiftly in deciding Mr. Malloy is evil.”

“We cannot know yet whether he is or he is not, since he cannot – or will not – tell us anything about himself.” The offended Miss Collins cast a stabbing look at Bill. “Although I cannot think that his arrival in the company of that so-called governess does much to recommend his virtues.”

“Oh,” exclaimed her brother, “now you’re going to impugn Miss Wick’s character, as well? Do tell me, sister, what has that young lady done to arouse your ire?”

Abigail drew herself up and somehow managed to look down her nose at Jeremiah, despite the top of her head only reaching the height of his shoulders. “I see no reason to discuss that with you. You may be assured that I will share with our brother all of the ways in which she is an inappropriate person to teach his daughter.”

“Abigail,” said Jeremiah, “you would find inappropriate any governess who is younger than sixty or who has any more pleasing appearance than a cow in a dress.”

“I cannot think why I was surprised that you would invite this man into our house,” was his sister’s cutting reply. “If the duty of hospitality is so important to you, one might think you would not indulge in vulgar wrangling in front of your precious guest.”

With her head held high, and with her rustling petticoats adding emphasis to her departure, the formidable Miss Collins swept from the room.

“I told you what a charming family we are,” Jeremiah Collins said to Bill Malloy. Jeremiah gave a half-smile, half-grimace. “For what it is worth, I apologize for my sister’s rudeness.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Bill told him. “We can’t choose our families.”

“No,” Jeremiah agreed. “Sadly, we cannot. And you haven’t even met the head of the family yet! But you have more pressing concerns than discussing the peculiarities of the Collins family. Have you been able to recover anything of your memory?”

“No,” Bill said gruffly, embarrassed again at continuing with this fiction. “I’m afraid not.”

“I am sorry for that,” Jeremiah said, frowning seriously. He looked as if he wanted to say more. Before he could, the young woman who had brought them supper in the nursery yesterday appeared from the door to the kitchen wing. She was carrying a tray with Bill’s bowl of oatmeal and a silver coffee service. Bill was pretty certain that particular coffeepot and its accoutrements were among the treasured antiques at Collinwood in 1967.

“Thank you, Bessie,” said Jeremiah, gallantly taking the tray from her. “Good morning. I’ll just have coffee and two pieces of toast before I go out this morning.”

Bessie smiled shyly up at Jeremiah, bobbed into a curtsy, and made a rapid exit. Bill thought it was likely that she had waited to make her appearance until after Miss Abigail Collins left the room – since Bessie the kitchen maid was younger than sixty and did not in any way resemble a cow.

Bill’s opinion of 1795 was dramatically improved by the discovery that he could get black coffee with one spoonful of sugar here, just like he did at home. Not that the coffee was enough to make him want to stick around.

He told himself, _When I get home, if anybody asks me what I think of the 18 th century I’ll tell them, “Nice place for a visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.”_

As Jeremiah Collins and his houseguest made their way through their breakfasts,  Jeremiah remarked, “I’m glad you found some of the clothing that suits you. When I see you out of the corner of my eye, I keep thinking you are Barnabas. He always used to wear my hand-me-downs. And since reaching adulthood, he has helped himself to anything he fancies from my wardrobe. So whenever I’ve seen my clothes walking around without me inside of them, it has always previously been Barnabas wearing them.”

“I’m very grateful to you for the loan,” Bill said. He thought it was lucky he hadn’t decided to wear the wallpaper-stripes vest that went with the beige coat and britches. If he had, then he and Jeremiah would be just about dressed as twins – although the beige suit Jeremiah sported today had fancier trim on it than his hand-me-downs that Bill was wearing.

Jeremiah waved away Bill’s thanks. “Please think nothing of it. And please don’t think of it as a loan. You’re welcome to keep all of it, unless you wish to return it when you recover your own belongings.” Changing the subject, he went on, “I’m going in to work at our family’s shipyard shortly. I thought you might want to accompany me to Collinsport. I’ll be speaking with the innkeeper and with Constable Hemphill about yesterday’s accident. The constable will want to hear your description of what you saw at the wreck site. And if you come with me to the inn, we’ll be able to learn if the landlord or anyone else there recognizes you.”

“Of course I’ll come,” Bill said. “Thank you.” He tried hard not to sound as uneasy as he felt.

Riggs reappeared while Jeremiah was finishing a last cup of coffee. Jeremiah said to him, “Please see to it that my horse is readied, and one for Mr. Malloy, as well. And please bring our coats. Oh, and hats. Mr. Malloy will need one. Would you see if you can locate one he might borrow?”

The black tricorn hat that Riggs returned with really did make Bill feel like he was dressing up for another costume party. He thought as he plunked it on, _If I’m not careful, I’m going to start shouting, “The British are coming! The British are coming!”_

After another few minutes’ preparations, Bill followed his host through corridors to the back of the house and out to the massive complex of stables and other outbuildings – most of which had either burned to the ground or fallen down decades before Bill began working for Collins Enterprises. A tall, red-haired man whom Jeremiah addressed as Tierney had horses ready for them, assisted by a lanky, pimple-faced kid who by the look of him had to be Tierney’s son.

Bill once again had reason to be grateful for his frequent visits to his cousins’ farm. Thanks to them, he wasn’t as painfully ignorant about horses as he might have been. Although he still wasn’t certain his horsemanship was up to snuff for managing a wind-and-rain-pummeled ride down Widow’s Hill along an increasingly soupy dirt road. Luckily the horse seemed to know what it was doing. _And,_ Bill thought, _it’s a good thing I’m a sailor, so I’m used to getting wet._ Though since he’d pretty much had a desk job for the past several years, it was a long time since he had gotten this thoroughly, every-stitch-of-one’s-clothes-sucking-up-water-like-a-sponge drenched.      

The commute that took ten minutes to drive in 1967 translated to an hour’s sodden ride. When the horses slogged onto Collinsport’s Main Street, Bill asked himself, _Is it too early in the day to stop in at the Blue Whale?_

He felt like he had the land-going mariner’s equivalent of seasickness. Bill thought he would rather be on deck riding out a gale, any day, than endure another horseback ride like that one.

But now they had arrived in Collinsport. And the bizarre wonder of everything he saw shoved his physical complaints to the back of his mind where they belonged.

Riding through Collinsport had the hallucinatory feel of a dream.

It was the village he knew, and it wasn’t. About every third building, he recognized. The other buildings he expected to see were nowhere to be found. In their places were empty lots, orchards, or buildings he had never seen. There wasn’t a sidewalk in sight except for a few bits of boardwalk in front of some of the businesses. The tall, stately trees he expected to see lining Main Street weren’t there. Instead there were a few massive, gnarled old oaks that had presumably been growing before the founding of the town. And a sizeable number of houses on Main and the side streets were equipped with their own orchards.

Bill thought, _By the time I get home, I’ll be the world’s leading expert on 18 th-century Collinsport. If I ever retire from Collins Enterprises, maybe I can get a job at that Collinsport History Center that Roger is always threatening to found some day._

The Collinsport Inn stood about a block ahead of them. Today it looked to Bill even more of a landmark than it usually did. In this version of the town, it was the tallest building around.

Jeremiah Collins reined in. He commented, “That’s the inn up ahead there. We’ll stop here first; this is Constable Hemphill’s house. And,” Jeremiah added, “there is the constable himself.”

The man in question had chosen a less-than-auspicious day to do repairs on his house. Thoroughly bundled up in overcoat, scarf and broad-brimmed hat, he was down on his knees, hammering a board to the base of the door at a side entrance to his house.

The visitors from Collins House dismounted into the mud of the road. Bill followed Jeremiah’s lead in looping his horse’s reins around the nearby hitching post. Then they made their way through the gate in the fence that surrounded the two-story saltbox house.

“Good morning, Constable,” Jeremiah called.

Constable Hemphill looked up and squinted at them through the rain. “Is that what this is?” he inquired. “Good morning, then, Mr. Collins.”

The constable got to his feet, depositing his hammer in his overcoat pocket and wiping mud from his hands onto his coat. He was a 30’s-ish fellow with a snub nose and a round, cheerful face. Bill liked the guy right off the bat. His favorable reaction probably owed a lot to the fact that Hemphill was _not_ a look-alike for anyone Bill knew in 1967.

“You picked an interesting day for construction work,” remarked Jeremiah Collins.

Ruefully, Hemphill said, “Every time it rains, my wife reminds me about the leaks in the mudroom.   So this time I thought, while she’s out taking the prisoners their breakfast, I’ll finally get some leaks fixed. I’ve got the door done, now. Next I’ll get out the ladder and replace some shingles.”

“You’re a brave man, Mr. Hemphill.”

“I’d be a braver one if I kept on ignoring her reminders.” His expression turning serious, the constable asked, “You’re here to speak about the accident?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, come inside, then. You and Mr.—?”

“Malloy,” said Jeremiah. “He is the one who first discovered the wreck.”

Hemphill nodded and touched the brim of his dripping hat to Bill. Bill nodded back. Opening his newly repaired door, the constable led them into a space barely larger than a phone booth. A built-in bench faced the door. Beside it, a two step staircase led up into another room where Bill glimpsed a piano – if those instruments were called pianos in 1795.

Jeremiah said, “We needn’t go any farther inside. There’s no sense in our tracking mud on your carpets.   I would hate to be responsible for Mrs. Hemphill giving you further reminders.”

Hemphill looked uncomfortable. “I don’t like to make a Collins cool his heels in the mudroom.”

With a smile, Jeremiah countered, “Since I am a thoroughly wet and muddy Collins, it would seem the appropriate place for me.”

“Have a seat, gentlemen,” the constable of Collinsport said dubiously, gesturing to the bench.

Jeremiah and Bill obeyed. The bench was just barely large enough for both of them to squeeze onto. Constable Hemphill stood by the door. He took off his hat and began to shake the water from it, then realized that he was splattering his guests. So he just shrugged and dropped the hat to the floor. “Will you tell me what you saw, sir?” he asked Bill.

Bill gave his summation of the accident scene. When he got to the presence of the man at the carriage door, Hemphill naturally asked him for a description. Bill had a hard time coming up with an answer.

“I’m afraid there’s not much I can tell you. I think he was young – younger than you, probably. Pretty thin. Clean-shaven. He wore a long coat. I think he had on a knit cap – like a fisherman’s cap. That’s about it. He bolted like a rabbit when I called to him.”

“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”

“I couldn’t swear to it,” Bill admitted. “I’m sorry.”

Constable Hemphill sighed and scratched his face. “That man is our real mystery in this incident. From your description, he doesn’t sound like Moore the coach driver. Not the ‘thin’ part, anyway. Moore’s a big fellow. So who was this man and what was he doing there? Did he cause the wreck by stepping in front of the coach? Did he do it on purpose, to rob the mail and the passengers?”

Jeremiah frowned in thought. “If he was a highwayman, he was frightened off very easily. One would think if he had made the decision to rob the coach, he wouldn’t have fled on the instant Mr. Malloy appeared.”

Hemphill pointed out, “He couldn’t know whether or not Mr. Malloy was armed. Or whether more people might be coming along right behind him.”

“At any rate,” Jeremiah went on, with a glance at Bill, “that man’s identity and intentions are not the only mystery in all of this. Mr. Malloy’s presence at the scene is mysterious as well.”

“It is?” Hemphill asked, looking blankly at Bill.

Little though he wanted to do this, Bill knew he had no good way of getting out of it. So, brusquely and as briefly as possible, he told the story of his supposed amnesia.

“Hunh,” the constable remarked, when Bill had finished his tale. “Can’t say I know what to tell you.”

Jeremiah Collins pursued, “There haven’t been any inquiries about a missing man? No one was expecting a traveler through this area who has not yet arrived at his destination?”

“No,” said Hemphill, now scratching his head. “Sorry. Nothing like that.” He asked Jeremiah, “Fowle and the men on your building crew didn’t recognize Mr. Malloy?”

“None of them seemed to know him.”

“Hunh. Have you asked them at the inn yet?”

“That will be our next stop.”

Constable Hemphill told Bill, “I’ll let you know if we do get any inquiries of that sort. If I hear anything that could be of use to you. Where are you staying?”

“With the Collinses, for now,” Bill answered. He added in his thoughts, _At least until they decide my story is as full of holes as a lobster pot, and they decide to kick me out._

The constable continued, “You’ll let me know if you change your residence? In case there is anything I need to discuss with you again?”

For the first time, the conversation with Hemphill reminded Bill of how this kind of discussion would go with Sheriff Patterson. The unspoken order sounded clearly in the subtext: _Don’t leave town without letting us know. You may be required to assist the police with their inquiries._

“I’ll let you know,” Bill said.

Hemphill then discarded his official demeanor. He grinned, reached down to pick up his sopping wet hat, and said to Jeremiah and Bill, “Thank you for stopping by, gentlemen. Now I have to climb up a wet ladder and install some shingles.”

Bill would have been delighted if he could just lead his horse down the block to the Collinsport Inn, instead of riding it. But he didn’t want to make himself conspicuous to Jeremiah as someone less comfortable with horses than the average person would be in the 18th century. So the two of them made the brief ride. They parked their horses at one of the inn’s many hitching posts and headed inside – while Bill tried hard not to stare around him in _too_ obvious amazement.

The inn was certainly recognizable to him. But it had the not-quite-right strangeness of images out of a dream. It was painted white, like he expected it to be. But the porch that should surround the street-facing sides of the building was nowhere to be seen. Bill missed the cheerful neon signs he expected to see in the windows: the “Vacancy” sign by the front door and the “Café” sign in the window down by the corner.

Inside, the differences were starker. The stairs were where they should be. But there was no sign of Mr. Wells’ check-in counter in the lobby, with its various accoutrements, or the cubbyholes behind it. For that matter, there was no actual lobby. A big, open room, all white plaster and massive, dark, exposed ceiling beams, took up the space that would later be divided between lobby and coffee shop.

Only two of the many tables around the room were occupied. An elderly lady and two middle-aged ones who looked like probably her daughters sat at the table nearest the fireplace, in which a sizeable blaze was crackling away. Two men with the look of prosperous business travelers forced indoors by the rain sat near the corner that would house the café’s outside door in Bill’s day.    

Bill more than half expected to be greeted by an 18th-century Mr. Wells. Instead the man who came bustling out to meet them was big, broad-shouldered and just starting to decline towards fat. His red-blond beard was likewise in the beginning stages of turning white. In a decade or so, Bill thought, this man would be a natural to play Santa Claus at children’s Christmas parties. If that type of Christmas party even existed yet.

Jeremiah Collins introduced the innkeeper as Mr. Appleton. In reply to Jeremiah’s inquiry, Appleton reported that the family of the dead carriage guard, who lived in Bucksport, had been notified and had come to collect the body this morning. The body of the unfortunate passenger Fleming was being kept in a room at the inn until his family arrived to claim it. Appleton’s son had set out first thing that morning, carrying the news of Fleming’s death to the address in Belfast they had found on his luggage.

Jeremiah said, “If you incur any expenses that are not reimbursed, or if no family should be found, be sure to send your bill to Collins House. I would not see you out-of-pocket in this. Particularly as I fear my family must bear some responsibility, since the wreck took place at the commencement of our new road.” He went on, with a prompting glance toward Bill, “There is another matter in which we seek your assistance, Mr. Appleton.”

_Here we go again,_ Bill thought. Yet again he made his way through the embarrassingly false story of his memory loss. This time they had more of a song and dance to go through, once Appleton the innkeeper had stated that he didn’t recognize Bill. The entire staff of the inn was summoned to take a look at him. Two chambermaids, two waiters, Mrs. Appleton and two other members of the kitchen staff, and three stable hands all trooped through, to scrutinize Bill and deliver the inevitable verdict that they had never seen him before in their lives.

Appleton said, stroking his beard in thought, “I’ll take my oath there were only the two passengers in the coach when it left here yesterday, Mr. Collins: Fleming and your governess. And I watched the coach out of sight myself. If Mr. Malloy hailed the coach and joined its passengers, all I can say is that he did so when they were out of sight from the inn.”

Jeremiah heaved a sigh. “Thank you for your efforts, Mr. Appleton.” He turned to Bill and asked, “Will you join me in a rum toddy before we brave the elements again?”

“Gladly,” Bill said, and he meant it. That wouldn’t normally be his drink of choice. But on a day like this, it might just hold body and soul together for that ride back up the hill.

Jeremiah led the way to a table out of easy earshot from the other occupants of the room. While they waited for the toddies to arrive, he said with another angry sigh, “It is damnably frustrating. I thought certain we would find some clue that might help you before this. If I did not know it to be impossible, I would start to believe you simply arrived on the hillside by appearing from thin air.”

_If you only knew,_ Bill thought. Grimly he said, “I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

One of the waiters arrived with the rum toddies. Jeremiah Collins sought to lighten the mood. He said, “If these will not bring us the solution to your quest, at least they will make us warmer while we seek for it.”

As he took a sip of the hot, honeyed drink, Bill had to admit it was exactly what the doctor ordered. He said, raising his glass to Jeremiah, “I take my hat off to you, Mr. Collins. You’ve found a drink that ideally suits your environment.”

Jeremiah smiled, in between swigs that took him through his toddy at a speedier rate than Bill had any interest in copying. “Believe me, it is the result of long and dedicated study. There are times when a good toddy is the only thing that makes winter in Collinsport endurable.” His expression turned regretful. “I hope my nephew’s fiancée will not find our climate too much to endure. I fear there must be few ways in which the Province of Maine compares favorably with Martinique.”

Jeremiah’s comments reminded Bill of a question he kept puzzling over, and kept putting out of his mind. Now he made a stab at finding an answer to it. “I remember your niece mentioned her brother’s fiancée yesterday. Is she due to arrive here soon?”

“Overdue,” replied Jeremiah, with a troubled frown. “The ship on which she and her father are traveling is already a week late for its scheduled arrival in Boston.”

Bill was trying to think up a way of asking the name of this fiancée without just sounding nosy. Jeremiah saved him the trouble. “Poor Barnabas was already eaten up with anxiety over her, even before this storm hit. Now with the weather taking the turn it has, he is well-nigh frantic. If Josette does not arrive soon …”

It seemed that Jeremiah could think of nothing to say after that. He simply shook his head, heaved a large sigh, and drained the last of his rum toddy.

_Josette,_ Bill thought. _That’s what I thought they said yesterday._

_I will be danged if it makes the least bit of sense._

_Josette is the fiancée of Barnabas?_

Bill was no Collins genealogy expert. He didn’t have all their lineage and anecdotes memorized, unlike just about everybody else who hung out at Collinwood. But Josette Collins was the pinup girl for the family’s history. She was everybody’s go-to family ghost. She enlivened séances, she delivered dire warnings, and – along with the fabled “widows,” who seemed to have five or so mutually contradictory legends connected with them – she was the first person everyone at Collinwood seemed to think of when anything went bump in the night.       

The only thing was, Bill was absolutely Christly certain that Josette was always referred to as “the wife of Jeremiah Collins.”

Jeremiah Collins. Not Barnabas.

Bill asked, “Have you met your nephew’s fiancée?”

“Not yet,” Jeremiah answered, with a fond smile. “But I am certain she is an angel in human form. She must be, to inspire the starry-eyed sonnets with which Barnabas describes her!”

Jeremiah stood up, telling Bill, “Do not let me hurry you, Mr. Malloy. And please, stay for another, or for some lunch if you wish; I will tell Mr. Appleton to place it on my account. I do not blame you if you are in no rush to get back outside into that. I would not be either, but I am due at the shipyard – or overdue, as my brother informed me this morning. With his current attack of gout cutting down on the time he spends at the yard, apparently our family’s fortunes will topple if I do not spend the requisite number of hours with my nose to the grindstone.”

“Thank you,” Bill said. He stood up to bid Jeremiah goodbye. “I’ll just finish this up. Then I’ll head out as well.”

“Where will you go?” Jeremiah asked. “Have you any plans?”

Bill tried to think of what he would do if he _really_ found himself here with a total lack of memory. He shrugged and said, “Just to ride around town. See if anything brings back some memory. Then I thought I would go back to that place on the road – the first place I remember. I keep thinking if I spend enough time there I’ll find what I’m looking for.”

“I hope you will,” said Jeremiah, in quiet sympathy. “I will see you back at the house this evening, Mr. Malloy. I hope by then you will have your answers.”

Jeremiah Collins departed. Bill sat back down, trying not to feel too morose as he stared at his drink.

_Drink up, Bill,_ he ordered himself.

Going back outside in the rain had very little appeal. But it had more appeal than just sitting here drinking rum toddies, when there had to be _something_ he could do that would help him get back home.

He drained his glass and headed for the door, bracing himself for the sodden ride up Widow’s Hill.

There wasn’t any point in riding around the village like he’d told Jeremiah he was going to. What he was truly looking for wasn’t here. Or it wasn’t here _now_.

One part of what he had told Jeremiah was accurate. The only practical plan he could think of was to go back yet again to that spot on the new road to Collinwood. Maybe this time, if he was standing there at the same time as when he first arrived here – at 3:00 in 1795 and 10:30 in 1967 – the door that had brought him here would open up again.

His borrowed horse was waiting in the rain with an air of stolid resignation. Bill reckoned the horse had the right attitude. He ought to take a page from the horse’s book and try for that attitude himself, at least regarding the weather. He was about to un-loop the reins from the hitching post when he heard an unfamiliar collection of noises, growing closer along Main Street.

The creaks and rattlings turned out to belong to a two-horse carriage that was churning its way through the mud. Judging from the collection of trunks strapped to the roof, the carriage had either a large number of passengers or a few passengers with a massive amount of luggage. Bill stepped closer to the building to avoid the muddy spray the carriage’s wheels hurled in all directions.

The driver was an elderly fellow who looked like he should have retired years ago. He pulled the rig to a halt near the inn’s main entrance. “Good day to you,” the old man hailed Bill. “Would this be Collinsport?”

“It would,” Bill called back.

Before the old driver could say more, the curtain obscuring the carriage window was dramatically swept aside. A young woman leaned out from the window. In a tone of voice that Bill thought a novelist would probably describe as “musical,” she called out to Bill, “Pardon me, monsieur. Can you direct us to the house of the Collins family?”

Now that the mud was no longer flying, Bill walked over to the carriage. The young woman, he thought, was either a total innocent or she calculated every move to cause the greatest possible impact on every man in her vicinity. Bill’s bet would be on the second theory. Simply asking directions should not require her to put her cleavage quite so generously on display.

“Yes, miss,” Bill told her. “I’m staying there myself. I can escort you to the house if you’d like.”

“That would be very good of you, monsieur,” the young charmer replied. She dimpled prettily and fluttered her eyelashes in gratitude.    

Her repeated use of “monsieur” made an idea occur to Bill. It seemed an unlikely possibility, but he asked, “You wouldn’t happen to be Miss Josette?”

For an instant Bill thought he saw surprise and anger on her face. She recovered herself immediately. With a modest lowering of her gaze, she said, “Oh, no, monsieur. I am only the Countess Dupres’ maid. Mademoiselle Josette is my mistress’ niece.”

The mistress herself made her appearance at that moment. She crowded her maid away from the window. And Bill hoped to God that he would manage to keep his face expressionless.

He wondered, _How do two women fit in the same carriage as that hat?_

_You’d think the hat would have a carriage all to itself._

The hat boasted an aviary-worth of plumage. It was a multi-colored forest of feathers that bobbed when its owner spoke – which she was doing now, with vigor.

The Countess Dupres stridently demanded, “What manner of fool could mistake this girl for my niece? This American wilderness is more benighted than I thought if its people cannot tell the difference between a lady and a servant.”

_Nice to meet you, too,_ thought Bill. He felt a jolt of sympathy for the flirtatious maidservant.

He didn’t particularly approve of her flaunting her charms so obviously. But he approved even less of her having to listen to her employer spout that kind of crap.

“I haven’t met your niece, ma’am,” Bill said. “All I know is she’s expected at Collins House, and she’s French. You’ll have to excuse my backwoods ignorance in not knowing the difference between how ladies and servants say ‘monsieur.’”

He didn’t know what reaction he expected from the countess. He didn’t expect the reaction he got. She gave a sudden grin of amusement and said, “ _Touché,_ monsieur.” Then her good humor vanished as rapidly as it appeared.

“What do you mean, Josette is expected at Collins House?” she quizzed him imperiously. “Is she not there already?”

“No, ma’am. She hasn’t arrived yet. They expect her any time.”

The countess and her hat disappeared from the carriage window, as she flung herself histrionically back into her seat. “This cannot be happening!” Bill heard her insist – and he was glad he did not have to hear her from closer than several feet from the carriage. “It cannot be true! I _cannot_ be here before Josette! How can I impose myself on these Collinses as though they were common innkeepers, before my niece is here to welcome me?”

Bill heard the young maid suggest in mild tones, “I am sure they will be happy to welcome you, madame.”

“I am sure they will not! They will be no more happy than _I_ would be to welcome _them_ , if the situations were reversed. Oh, it is a nightmare. A nightmare! We have had nothing but trouble since the moment we set foot in this appalling country.”

_It could be worse, ma’am,_ Bill thought. _You could be here 172 years before your time._

As though summoned by countess’s jibe about innkeepers, Mr. Appleton had been drawn outside by the commotion. He now interposed smoothly, “Forgive me for interrupting, madame. I am the landlord here at the Collinsport Inn. You will be welcome to stay with us for as long as you wish, until your niece arrives. Any of our rooms that you prefer is at your disposal—”

The Countess Dupres did not even glance out the window at Appleton. “That decides it, then,” she announced, with a heavy sigh. “There is no escape. However awkward things may become at Collins House, it must be preferable to another night in one of these primitive hostelries. It is beyond comprehension how these people won their revolution, yet there is not one civilized inn between New York City and Collinsport. And no civilized inns _in_ New York City, either.”

“Sorry,” Bill muttered to Appleton.

The innkeeper cast him a surprised look. Then he hissed back, “I think I should be sorry for you.”

Bill had to agree with him. The countess reappeared in her feathery glory and said to Bill, “Very well, monsieur. You may guide us to Collins House.” She said it, of course, as though bestowing some glittering honor upon him.

“Gladly, ma’am,” Bill said, through gritted teeth.  

_There’s one thing to be thankful for,_ he thought, as he mounted up and started the little parade down Main Street. Irritation at the countess had distracted him from being disgruntled about the rain.

He managed some smidgens of conversation with the carriage driver before the road got too challenging: enough to learn that the old man’s name was McKinnon, and that he’d been driving coaches for forty-odd years for a friend of the countess who owned an estate near New York City. Apparently the visiting Frenchwoman had borrowed both carriage and driver for the duration of her journey. From the taciturn grimness with which McKinnon spoke, Bill reckoned the duration of this journey probably felt longer to him than his previous forty years of service.  

Arriving at the base of Widow’s Hill put an end to all conversation. Bill wished he had any kind of experience driving a carriage, so he could be of some help to McKinnon during the haul up the hill. Having none, the best he could do was stay out of McKinnon’s way, keep a sharp lookout for any hazards in the road, and pray that they weren’t about to see the second wreck on this hill in as many days.

The countess spent most of that drive voicing a litany of protest against the state of American roads. At least Bill assumed that was the subject of her complaints. His knowledge of French was not advanced enough to completely comprehend her diatribe. But he thought its basic meanings needed no translation.

Forty-plus years of carriage driving had served McKinnon well. He handled the voyage up the hill like the professional he was. Only right at the end, when one might have thought they were out of danger, did things start to go to hell in a hand basket.

They had reached the gate to Collins House. Bill dismounted and opened the gate for the carriage to pass through. As he did so he noticed that the road on the slope up ahead looked a bit like a waterfall. The drainage ditches at either side of it were clogged, and all the runoff from the hillside was pouring down the road in rivulets of mud.

“The road looks bad ahead,” Bill called to the driver. “If you wait here I can ride on to the stables and come back with horses for the women.”

McKinnon opened his mouth to reply, but another protest from inside the carriage cut him short. The countess demanded, “Are we to be delayed again at the very end of our voyage? Mere moments from the Collinses’ front door, we are forced to endure yet more waiting for the sake of a little mud?”

The driver set his jaw in stubborn anger. He looked as though he was holding back a diatribe of his own. He got the rig moving while Bill waited to shut the gate. Before Bill could even mount up again and follow, exactly what he could have predicted would happen, happened.

The wheels lost their purchase in the stream of mud. Driver and horses struggled to keep the carriage moving forward. Instead the whole rig slid backward a few feet. The back right wheel slipped off the edge of the road and splashed into the muck of leaves and mud that was supposed to be a drainage ditch. The wheel sank deep, all but the top inch of its rim vanishing from sight. Meanwhile the left wheel jolted into the air, accompanied by startled shrieks from the passengers.

Bill thought, _Matthew Morgan wouldn’t have let the ditches get clogged like that. If Ben Stokes is these Collinses’ groundskeeper, he’s falling down on the job._ It occurred to Bill that when the family had their new road to Collinwood constructed, they should have had someone clean out their drainage ditches, too.

He muttered, “Sorry, horse. It’ll be a while longer before you get back to your nice dry stable.” He looped the reins to one of the curlicues in the gate and slogged over to try lifting the carriage wheel from the muck.

It didn’t budge. The stuff in the ditch wasn’t quicksand, but it might just as well have been. There’d be a better chance of shifting the carriage if it didn’t have passengers and trunks weighing it down. But Bill knew there was no point suggesting that the countess might deign to get out. She probably wasn’t any more interested in permitting her trunks to languish in the mud.

McKinnon got down from his seat and came over to help with the carriage-raising efforts. The septuagenarian’s strength did not appreciably add to their combined force.

“That’s that,” observed Bill. McKinnon scowlingly nodded. Bracing himself for a new storm of protest, Bill went to report to the countess.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said. “The carriage is stuck. You’ll have to wait here while I ride ahead and fetch horses for you.” He added just for the sake of yanking the noblewoman’s chain, “Unless you’d prefer to walk.”

“Nonsense,” declared the countess. “Angelique will ride ahead. You will wait here with me, monsieur. I wish to speak with you.”

The woman’s high-handed disregard for her servant almost left him speechless. “Ma’am,” he growled, “I’m soaked through already. It’s no hardship for me to go. There’s no point in Miss Angelique going out in the rain when she doesn’t have to.”

“Bah,” she dismissed his argument. “Angelique is not made of sugar; she will not melt.”

“It is all right, monsieur,” added the countess’ young companion. She pulled up the hood of her cloak to shield her blond ringlets. “I do not mind.”

“Of course she does not,” Countess Dupres went on. “Fetch your horse for her and then join me here in the carriage. I wish the opportunity to study you further. There is something in your face which intrigues me.”

_Your eyesight needs checking, then,_ Bill thought, as he fumingly obeyed her instructions. Angelique smiled her thanks as he helped her onto the horse. He supposed it was probablytoo cynical on his part to assume she had flashed all that leg at him deliberately. After all, how _could_ someone in a dress get astride a saddle without showing their legs a bit? The young woman rode off, hunkering down over the horse’s neck against the rain and wind. Bill was left to face the countess who found his face intriguing.

“Well, get in here, man,” she ordered him. “You look like a frightened rabbit. You needn’t worry, my Puritan friend; I do not have immoral designs on your person. I merely desire the chance to determine what it is that I have sensed about you.”

_You’ve sensed anger, resentment and dislike,_ Bill thought. _I can tell you that free of charge._ He made one last attempt with, “I’m covered with mud, ma’am. I shouldn’t get into the carriage.”

“The carriage can be cleaned.”

Bill gave up. He clambered into the lopsided carriage and took the seat opposite the countess, doing his best to keep his muddy boots from touching anything.

He was amazed to learn that the countess’ hat was not her most outlandish accessory. Sitting beside her was a gigantic muff; or at least he supposed that was what the thing had to be. It looked like it was made from thousands of miniature pom-poms. He thought it wouldn’t take much special effects wizardry to turn that thing into the creature in some outer space monster movie.

But even the outer space muff was not the most surprising thing he saw. Again he had the disorienting sense of being in a dream. Here in close proximity, without the rain getting in the way, it struck him that the Countess Dupres was yet another doppelganger. It could easily have been Miss Hoffman the genealogist sitting there across from him – if someone had induced her to wear more makeup than he could imagine Miss Hoffman being willing to be caught dead in.

_I’m imagining it,_ he told himself. There wasn’t any reason for Miss Hoffman and the countess to have family ties linking them, since neither of them were from Collinsport. It was just his imagination working overtime. Overwrought by encountering so many look-alikes, he had created another of them out of a minor resemblance.

Miss Hoffman and Countess Dupres were simply two middle-aged, thin, red-haired women. Anyway, who the heck could tell _what_ the countess looked like, underneath all that makeup?

He hoped he wouldn’t sneeze. The air in the carriage was thick with the spicy, floral scent of the noblewoman’s perfume and the ever-present undertow of body odor. Not that he was singling out the countess for any blame on that. It was a trait she had in common with just about everyone else he’d met in this century. Brief though his acquaintance was with 1795, it was easy enough to tell that Ban roll-on hadn’t been invented yet.

While Bill was pondering resemblances and odors, the countess had presumably been studying his face. With a narrow-eyed gaze – an expression that, he realized, also reminded him of Miss Hoffman – she questioned him, “Are you from France, monsieur? Or you have been there recently?”

He remembered in time that he wasn’t supposed to have a memory. So he stuck with a non-committal, “Why do you ask?”

“What I saw in your face,” she answered. “It is death. A brush with death,” she amended, presumably so that her words would not sound too disturbing. “Sometime in your recent past, you have barely avoided your life coming to a violent end. It is something one sees very often in the faces of the _émigrés_ from France. Those who have only narrowly escaped the Terror.”

_Just a lucky guess,_ Bill told himself. He was absolutely _not_ going to get the creeps over thinking that Countess Dupres had seen the Matthew Morgan incident in his face.

Tilting her head and examining him with a half-amused, half-critical air, the countess pursued, “You are not going to tell me where you are from?”

He supposed there was no point in keeping the amnesia story from her. She was bound to hear it from somebody else anyway. Ordering himself not to grind his teeth about it, he gave the briefest version of the tale that he could manage: “I can’t tell you where I’m from because I don’t know. I found myself on the road to the Collinses’ new house yesterday with no memory of my past or how I got there. Jeremiah Collins invited me to stay with the family. He’s been trying to help me recover my memory.”

Countess Dupres seemed delighted with his story. “Aha!” she exclaimed. “That is it! I knew there was something unusual about you. Well, monsieur, you will have to let me help you solve your mystery. I will read the cards for you, and we will see what they have to tell us.”

_Wonderful,_ thought Bill. _So mystical flakes aren’t unique to the 1960s._ “The cards?” he asked grimly.

“The _tarot_ ,” she enthused. “A new means of divination brought to France by Etteilla, using the ancient tarocchi cards of Italy. It gives us the opportunity to tap into essential truths about ourselves; to use the wisdom and insights of the powers beyond us to better guide our own lives.”

Bill didn’t even try to keep the skepticism out of his voice. He asked, “Will the _tarot_ tell me who I am, where I came from and how I got here?”

The countess looked entirely untroubled by his doubt. She grinned and answered him, “Not in so many words. It _will_ have insights for you, whether you believe and accept them, or not. The cards never lie; but it us up to us whether we can understand and use the wisdom that they show to us.”

He wondered if she was going to whip out her cards and conduct his reading then and there. But perhaps the countess felt this was not a favorable location for consulting the ancient wisdoms. Instead she ordered Bill, “Now tell me what you and Mr. Jeremiah Collins have done thus far in the search for your identity.”

Bill couldn’t see a good means of concealing the answer from her; not without making himself look more of a suspicious character than he already did. But he was not very danged happy about the Countess Dupres involving herself in his fake mystery. With the _tarot_ -reading noblewoman _and_ Jeremiah Collins poking around investigating, they were bound to figure out his story was fishy in no time flat.

Holding back a sigh, he started summarizing the investigations that morning. It was a relief to him when, before he reached the end of his summary, Angelique returned with Barnabas Collins and four horses.

Bill got out of the way while the countess effusively greeted Barnabas. This process alternated between her repeatedly kissing his cheeks, telling him that he was too thin but that it was only to be expected considering the inedible food in this country, and bewailing the _faux pas_ by which the countess had arrived at Collins House before her niece.

“To be honest, countess,” Barnabas said when he managed to squeeze a word in edgeways, “I am less concerned with etiquette and more with Josette’s safety. Her ship is already overdue by a week. If anything has happened to her …”

“Well, do not worry, _mon cher,_ ” the countess told him, smiling. “When I have settled in to my chamber I will consult the cards for you. And I am certain they will tell us that Josette is in no danger. They told me so when I read the cards to seek knowledge of Josette only last night. Mark my words, _cher_ Barnabas, she is well. You and she will be together soon.”

_Good,_ Bill thought. _Maybe she’ll get so caught up in his reading, she’ll forget about doing mine._

He thought it was ridiculous that the stable hands had to saddle up all these horses, just so they could ride for a distance that would take them less than a minute to walk. But of course, heaven forbid the countess should be expected to walk anywhere – let alone to walk anywhere in the rain.

Barnabas Collins told McKinnon that some of the servants would be out soon to get the carriage out of the mud. And the four of them set forth on their infinitesimal horseback ride.

The stable hands, Tierney the elder and younger, were waiting by the pillars of Collins House to take charge of the horses. When the party dismounted and Barnabas escorted the ladies to the front door, Bill walked back to the stable with the Tierneys. He said to Tierney senior, “There’s something I’m hoping you can help me with. I’d like to borrow a bag – a satchel or something of that sort,” he went on rather lamely, wondering if that word even existed in 1795. “Um, like a shoulder bag. Made of oil cloth—” he found himself wondering if oil cloth existed yet, too— “or something like that; something reasonably waterproof. I have to go out again and I’m taking something with me. I need to make sure it doesn’t get soaked.”    

Unsurprisingly, Tierney gave him a bemused look at the end of this bumbling request. But he only said, “Yes, sir. If you’ll wait while we get the horses to their stalls, I should be able to find you something. Will you be needing a horse again, sir?”

“No. Thanks. I’ll be walking, this time.”

Bill waited. Soon enough, Tierney returned with precisely what Bill had asked for. Bill thought that he would certainly call this item an oil cloth satchel. _Though goodness knows,_ he thought, _if one calls it that in 1795._

He thanked Tierney and went into the house through the back door. Once inside, he immediately stopped. There wasn’t any carpeting here in the servants’ portion of the house. But in the realm of the family and their guests, carpets were everywhere. Which meant he did not want to go tromping around with his boots tracking mud all over the place. But he wasn’t gung-ho about the idea of cleaning his boots now, either, not when he would be just going right back outside.

The quickest thing to do would be to take the boots off. He left them beside the back door and hurried up the servants’ staircase. He hadn’t taken this route before, but he reckoned it was likely to lead him to a part of the house that he recognized. It did. One flight up, he found himself in the corridor leading to several of the bedrooms, including his.

When he reached his room, Bill was glad he had taken the trouble to hide the Collins family history book this morning. Some of the staff had definitely been in here. The bed had been turned down, presumably to air it, and the chamber pot had been emptied. However, it did not seem as though anyone had gone investigating under the floorboards.

Bill retrieved the Collins history book and his wallet from their hiding place. He stashed them in the borrowed satchel and was ready to head out again.   Back in the corridor, he had nearly reached the servants’ staircase when a door opened directly in front of him. A man stepped out from the staircase that led up to the third floor. He was calling over his shoulder to someone upstairs.

“Now you know,” the man said, in an impatient tone of voice. “She is not likely to stay in the nursery unless you are with her. See that you remember that. I do not wish to find my daughter playing with her dolls in my study every time I turn around.”

“Yes, Mr. Collins,” came a distant voice that presumably belonged to Miss Wick.

He turned, shutting the door behind him. And Bill found himself face to face with the head of the family, Mr. Joshua Collins.

He wasn’t a look-alike for Roger. But the family resemblance was definitely there. Joshua looked rather like Roger with a couple more decades of age, bushy gray sideburns, and a pinched and bitter expression that presumably matched his outlook on life. He was leaning on a cane, reminding Bill of the comments he’d heard about Joshua’s gout.

“Who may you be, sir?” the head of the family demanded. “Are you a member of the countess’s household?”

“No, sir. My name is Malloy—”

“Oh, yes. Jeremiah told me of you. Our guest who has lost his memory. Have you managed to recall anything?”

“No, sir. Not yet.”

“What a pity.” Joshua Collins’ sympathy sounded about as un-genuine as had that of Ben Stokes, the night before. He examined Bill with a look that was not quite a sneer. Presumably Joshua believed that sneering at Bill would imply actually giving a damn about him.

“May I enquire what has become of your shoes? I presume you did not lose them along with your memory.”

“No, sir,” Bill sighed, for the third time. “I’m going back outside and I didn’t want to get the carpets muddy.”

“We have servants to clean our carpets,” Joshua haughtily informed him. “We do not require that our guests sneak about in their stockinged feet. And may I also enquire what business takes you outside? I would not have thought that a man with no memory could have much business to transact.”

Stolidly Bill said, “My only business is recovering my memory. I’m going back to the place where I first found myself standing on the road. There’s a chance I’ll see something there that will bring my memory back.”

“I see. Then I wish you luck. We will be dining at 6:00,” Joshua continued. “We do not frequently dine together as a family. But tonight we will do so, in honor of the countess’ arrival. As our guest you will be expected to join us.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you,” said Bill, even though he knew it was an order, not an invitation.

“Next time,” advised Joshua, “leave your shoes on. Both footwear and carpeting can be cleaned.” He stepped around Bill and headed down the corridor, walking with a slow, limping tread.

_I will be damned,_ Bill thought. _Jeremiah was right. His siblings_ are _both nasty pieces of work!_

Meeting Joshua Collins made Bill grateful that he only had to deal with Roger as a brother-in-law.

_Things could be so much worse!_

Bill very much hoped that by 6:00 he would not be here in this century to join the Collinses for dinner.

With relief he saw that his boots were still by the door, and had not been carried off for cleaning. Soon he was slogging down the road again. At the stranded carriage he stopped to exchange greetings with Mr. McKinnon. Thus he was present at just the right moment to see Ben Stokes demonstrate his Herculean strength.

A couple of other men were there, too, presumably further members of the Collins House staff. Apparently they had just come along to watch Stokes show off. His face turned red and the tendons of his neck bulged a bit. But without so much as an audible grunt, he heaved on the wheel and lifted the whole kit and caboodle out of the muck. Stokes set the carriage back on the road and straightened up, wiping his muddy hands on his britches.

As he walked onward down the road, Bill wondered if he had just been imagining things when he thought that the smug look on Stokes’ face was aimed directly at him.

It had breezed up a bit since he was outdoors last. That, of course, meant that the wind was making a credible effort at blowing Bill off his feet. And naturally, he was walking into the wind. Though that would probably be the case no matter what direction he was walking. Up here on Widow’s Hill, the wind had a tendency to blow from every direction at once.

It was only a little past two o’clock when he reached the famous spot on the road. Almost an hour until the supposed witching hour of 3:00. And then, of course, he would need to stay for another hour or so, to give this attempt a fair chance.

He chided himself for even permitting the thought that this attempt might not work.

_I had_ really _better hope I get out of here soon,_ Bill told himself. _It’ll be just my luck if all of this standing around in the rain gives me a cold. I don’t want to think about what cold remedies might be like in the 18 th century!_

If he did get carried off back to 1967, he was going to feel bad about taking Tierney’s oil cloth bag along with him. But he couldn’t see any way around it. He had to have the Collins history with him, and he also needed not to get it wet. After the day he had spent thus far, the greatcoat and all the rest of his borrowed clothes were too soaked to provide any protection for the book at all.

Maybe this hadn’t worked when he tried it last night because he wasn’t touching the book. After all, it was when he touched the page of the family history with Sarah Collins’ picture that he had been transported here.

_Does that mean I should be touching Liz’s picture now?_

He only had one photo of Liz with him; the same battered black-and-white snapshot that he had carried in his wallet for 21 years. The snapshot showed Liz and Bill on the boardwalk at Collinsport’s waterfront, on July 4, 1946. She was smiling at him with an amused expression, as though she had just told him a joke. He was looking at her – well, the way he supposed he almost always looked at her. As though he was the happiest man in the world just to be near her. As though his idea of heaven was simply being there with her forever.

He thought, _If I’m touching_ that _photo, does it mean I’ll get sent to 1946?_

He should have gotten a more recent photo for his wallet. He guessed he had always figured he had time for that. He didn’t expect to turn around one night and find himself stranded in 1795.

_Not stranded! Don’t think like that._

_If you let yourself give up hope, then you really will be stuck here._

But now that he thought of it, maybe he did have another photo of Liz. There might be one of her in the Collins family history book. He didn’t know. He had never looked at the book much himself – although probably he should have, as an initiation ritual for marrying a Collins. And the only times people brought the book out to illuminate family conversations seemed to be when they were discussing some ancient relative who might or might not be a ghost.

He reckoned there was enough time before 3:00 for him to walk down the road to the shelter of the trees and take a quick look at the book. And sure enough, as soon as he flipped to the back of the book, there it was. A few pages from the end of the family history was a full-page portrait of Liz in her Matriarch of the Collins Family mode, looking regal in an elegantly simple black dress and a tasteful selection of ancestral jewelry.

It was all nothing but guesswork, but he had to try everything he could. With a little juggling, he got the book back into the satchel, with his hand inside it so he could keep touching Liz’s portrait.

Then it was back out into the rain, to his station on the road. It was a danged good thing, he thought, that he was trying to reach a state of altered consciousness. Standing there in the rain, with the Widow’s Hill wind moaning around him, was a lot more bearable if he forgot that he had a body at all. He just had to ignore all physical reality and do nothing but think of Liz.

_Think of Liz,_ he thought. _Just like I’ve been doing for 21 years._

When the fear crept back in, and he caught himself wondering if he would see her again, he didn’t know if he should cry or laugh at the irony of it.

Twenty-one years of worshipping Liz in silence. Twenty-one years of believing that his fantasies of her would never become reality. Then suddenly his dreams came true. Suddenly they had three glorious months together. Three months of more joy than he could have imagined – and now here he was, torn away from her and deposited on Widow’s Hill 115 years before she was born.

_I have to believe that I’ll see her again. I have to._

He stood there and did nothing but picture Liz’s face. He thought of nothing except for Liz’s name.

When he finally wandered back to reality and took a look at his watch, it read 11:43 in 1967 time. Over an hour past the time when he first arrived in 1795, one day ago.

Twice, now, he had tried the only plan he could think of. Twice that plan had failed.

_So it’s time to move on. It’s time to face what your reality is now, and to do something about it._

He slid his hand out of the satchel, shoved his hands into the greatcoat pockets – the pockets were wet, but at least it kept his hands out of the wind – and started trudging back down the road to Collins House.

It seemed he had pretty well proved he could not get to 1967 by just standing in the road. That meant he had to come up with another strategy.

He supposed he could try holding another séance. It was a séance that sent him here. Maybe another séance would send him back. Only he doubted séances worked with just one person. Didn’t you need two, at least, to do the finger-tip touching?

Who could he convince to try a séance with him here?

Countess Dupres, maybe, since she was into _tarot_ cards. And maybe Jeremiah? But on the whole, he did not think it sounded like a good idea. So the countess enjoyed consulting the cards to contact the powers beyond. That did not automatically mean she would approve of him asking the spirits to send him forward in time. This wasn’t the days of the Salem Witch Trials. But for all he knew, people here still believed enough in black magic that this sort of dabbling could get him in serious trouble.

Even if the countess and Jeremiah weren’t bothered by the idea of a séance, all he needed was for Miss Abigail Collins to find out about it. Then everything really would hit the fan. She was already talking about stamping out evil, just because he had arrived at the house with a pretty governess she didn’t approve of. Let her find out he was trying to contact spirits, and she’d be running around shouting “Satan” before they could so much as light a candle and touch finger-tips!

And if he did contact any relevant spirits, what were they going to say to him? It would likely be something along the lines of, “You were sent here to do a job. Now do it, and stop whining about going home.”

Since the powers involved would apparently not just send him home again, it seemed he was back to the theory that he was here to accomplish something. Back to the theory that all of this was tied in with “how it all began.” That he was here to learn how it began, and to figure out if there was something he could do about it.

If he could not be with Liz, he had to fall back on the cause that gave his life its meaning for the past 21 years. He had to focus on helping Liz, trying to make things easier for her, trying to protect her and the people she loved.

The spirits were angry, supposedly, in 1967. Supposedly they wanted to destroy someone at Collinwood. So his job was to learn what all of it was about, and to God-damn well do something to fix it. Since these angry spirits threatened David and maybe everyone else Liz cared about, solving this problem was the way he could help Liz now.

Of course all of that was sure to be easier said than done. But it gave him a goal to work toward. Something he could try to accomplish, instead of just missing Liz and sinking himself in despair.

Inside the gate, the drainage ditches had been cleared. That was one good thing, anyway. Hopefully it meant they wouldn’t keep on having carriage accidents as daily events on Widow’s Hill.

When he reached the pillared entrance to Collins House he spent a while outside scraping the mud from his boots. For the first time he noticed an odd-looking iron thing set into the stone to one side of the door, that looked a bit like a magazine stand. Since it had clumps of mud all around it, he guessed it had to be a boot scraper. He put it to good use, and eventually decided he could venture inside without worrying about getting mud on the carpets or about Joshua giving him grief for his stockinged feet.

In the entryway, Riggs the butler was lighting the candles for the evening. Bill greeted him and asked, “Is there somewhere in the house where I could have a bath?”

Riggs looked as though this were the most outlandish thing a guest had ever asked of him. “A hot bath, sir?” he inquired. He didn’t quite manage to keep the disapproval from sounding in his voice.

“Uh, yes. If that’s possible.” Bill wondered, _What on earth is so odd about a man wanting a hot bath after he’s tromped about in the rain all day?_

“Certainly, sir,” Riggs told him dourly. “It will take some time to heat the water. We will bring it to your room.”

“Thank you,” Bill said, already beginning to wish he hadn’t made the request at all. “And, if you could – I’ll be in your debt if you can find me some soap and a razor.”

“Of course, sir.”

Up in his room, he had more than time enough to stash the family history book and his wallet back in their hidey-hole. The arrival of his bath was such a friggin’ production, he began to understand why body odor was such a widespread problem in 1795.

Two men, the same two he had seen watching Ben Stokes’ strong man act on the road, hauled the tub to his room. It reminded him of his grandma’s old washtub, only about twice as large. Those two men left, to return accompanied by the young man who had helped bring dinner to the nursery last night. The two carried between them an enormous, steaming copper kettle, while the young fellow lugged a bucket of cold water. All of this scarcely did more than cover the bottom of the tub. One of the men said in not _too_ grudging a tone, “We’ll be right back with more, sir.”

Going through the same routine again still produced a pretty shallow bath. But by this time Bill was done with watching these poor fellows haul massive kettles through the house to fulfill his apparently unheard-of request. “That’s enough, thanks,” he told them. “Look here, I’m sorry I made you go to so much trouble. I’ll be happy to help you carry these things back downstairs, when I’m done.”

All three of them stared at him. The eldest of the three, a gray-haired, hatchet-faced man, answered, “That isn’t necessary, sir. As long as you’re the guest of the Collins family, we work for you as well as for them.”

“At least you can stop calling me ‘sir.’ My name’s Bill Malloy. ‘Mr. Malloy’ will be fine. What are your names?”

Presumably they all thought he was crazy. But they were willing to humor him. The gray-haired man introduced himself as John Knowles. The other man Bill had seen by the countess’ carriage gave his name as Charles Stover, and the young man gave his as Isaac Hinckley.

“Pleased to meet you. Thanks for doing this,” Bill added, nodding toward the bath.

“Certainly – Mr. Malloy,” replied Knowles, clearly only just stopping himself from saying ‘sir.’ Knowles went on, “Any clothes you would like to have cleaned or dried, you can leave on the edge of the tub. We’ll take them down to the laundry room when we clear away the bath things.”

Bill thanked them again, and gave Knowles the oil cloth satchel with the request that he return it to Mr. Tierney. Knowles, Stover and Hinckley made their departure. On the bedside table they had left the razor and soap he had asked for, on top of a stack of linen towels that reminded him of the towels his mother used to make out of flour sacks.

The hot water certainly felt good after his day’s activities. But under the circumstances, it was not exactly a bath he could relax and enjoy.

_Nice going, Bill,_ he told himself. _You’ve given the staff extra work and you’ve convinced Knowles, Stover and Hinckley that you’re a total lunatic._

_Not a lunatic,_ his thoughts answered back _. As long as you’re the guest of the Collins family, the word for you is “eccentric.”_

_Well, I don’t care how eccentric it is. If I’m their guest long enough to take another bath, I’ll ask if I can take it in the laundry room._

Since every piece of clothing he’d put on that morning was soaked, he had to go through assembling an outfit all over again. He settled on a gray suit and one of the wallpaper-stripe vests. As he grimaced at the vest he reminded himself, _It’s better than the birds or the flowers._

The complexities and annoyances of getting bathed and dressed were balanced by the absolute delight of being able to shave. It was a good thing that when he was first learning to shave, his granddad had given Bill some lessons with his old straight razor. Clearly Mr. Gillette had not yet invented his safety razor in 1795.

Shortly before 6:00, freshly attired and reveling in once again being smooth-faced around the outlines of his beard, Bill Malloy made his appearance in the parlor for the dubious honor of dining with the Collins family.

Jeremiah, Barnabas and the countess were already there. The two Collins men nodded and made appropriate murmurs at some anecdote the lady was telling them. Next to arrive, after Bill, was Miss Abigail. Somehow she managed to look even more disapproving of the titled Frenchwoman than she did of Bill. The head of the household arrived next. Joshua mistakenly attempted to make small-talk with the countess on the subject of what she thought about American cooking. Naturally, this revealed that she believed it to be only one slight step up from the cuisine of savage tribesmen dancing around their cooking pot.

Joshua Collins and his sister stood together by the fireplace, eyeing the countess with identical looks of disdain. The countess stood near the bay window while she voiced her culinary insights, using the space around the window as her own personal stage. Barnabas lingered uncomfortably near her. He frequently glanced out the window as though he thought someone might arrive at the house at any moment.

Jeremiah clearly decided that the company would be improved by a little liquid refreshment. He went to the table that held a decanter and glasses and poured himself a sizeable glass. Then he walked over and joined Bill, who was standing as close to the edge of the parlor as he could without actually lurking in the entrance hallway.

“Can I get you anything?” Jeremiah asked in an undertone, gesturing with his glass.

“No, thanks,” Bill answered in the same tone. “There’s a lot of the evening left to get through.”

Jeremiah sighed and took a sip of his drink. “There certainly is.”

The mantel clock began striking 6:00. Joshua Collins cast an impatient look at it, and then interrupted the countess’ lecture with the order, “Barnabas, go and see what is detaining your mother.”

The younger Collins glanced to the hallway and then smiled. “No need, father,” he said. Barnabas walked to the foot of the stairs, where he stood holding out his hand to the lady descending the staircase.

“Good of you to join us, my dear,” Joshua Collins said coldly.

“It is 6:00 now,” his wife replied as she reached the bottom of the stairs and took her son’s hand. “I have not kept our guests waiting.”

Her voice sounded familiar to Bill. It was quiet and gentle, but it jolted through him like the gales of Widow’s Hill.

Barnabas escorted his mother into the parlor. “Mother,” he said, “this is Mr. Malloy, who was so helpful to Miss Wick after the accident yesterday.”

The lady smiled graciously and said something to him. Bill had no idea what she had said.

A rush of dizziness slammed into him, followed by an agonizing mix of hope, longing and despair.

Only two hours ago he stood on the road to Collinwood, fighting to think of his wife with such force that he would be sent through time to reach her. Now he could almost believe his attempt had succeeded. For a moment he almost believed he had been thrown through time to 1967 – to that late August night when Cousin Barnabas hosted a costume party in this very room.

It could easily have been Cousin Barnabas standing there, not his look-alike ancestor. And the radiant lady standing with him, in the gown and the glittering jewelry of Naomi Collins, looked at that moment identical in every way to Elizabeth Collins Malloy.

 

 


	6. Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bill daydreams of killing Joshua Collins, Countess Dupres consults the cards, and Jeremiah Collins demands answers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not a tarot expert, and never did anything with tarot before starting the research for this chapter. But for the sake of feeling like I knew something of what I was talking about in writing the countess' tarot-reading sequence, I've now read up a bit on tarot in the 18th century. I bought a "Universal Tarot de Marseille" deck which is a replica of a 1751 Swiss deck by Claude Burdel, and have based some of the countess' card interpretations on the interpretations in the booklet accompanying that deck. Of course, some other interpretations have been purely my own flights of fancy -- which I think is fully in keeping with the countess' tarot sequences in the show!

Chapter Six

**_My name is Bill Malloy._ **

**_As a storm rages at the crest of Widow’s Hill, people drawn together by fate are arriving at the great house of the Collins family. They are gathering for an approaching wedding. Yet few of them understand that battle lines are being drawn. None yet realize that the conflict which will destroy them will also haunt their family for generations to come._ **

**_A man from the present who has journeyed to the year 1795 seeks to uncover the secrets lurking at Collins House. He seeks the answers that may save the family he loves in 1967._ **

Bill Malloy stared at the mistress of Collins House. As Naomi Collins smiled at him in polite, puzzled concern, his thoughts insisted desperately, _She isn’t Liz. She is not Liz!_

And of course she was not. She had seemed so identical in the first moment he saw her. But little differences rapidly made themselves obvious, in among the similarities that made it almost unbearable for him to look at her.

Naomi Collins’ hair was more of a dark blond, as opposed to Liz’s brown. But the two women’s eyes were the same color exactly: that warm, soulful hazel brown that Bill was going to have to work very hard not to lose himself in.

The angles of Naomi’s face were probably softer than Liz’s. There was a puffiness beneath Naomi’s eyes suggesting grief or sleeplessness. Naturally, as a lady of the 18th century, she was corseted to within an inch of her life. So it was hard to guess what her build might be like without the corset. Even so, Bill thought Naomi probably lacked the iron self-control by which Liz at age 56 retained the same measurements as she’d had at 20.

What made the likeness so mocking and painful was that Naomi was wearing the very same dress as Liz had worn for Cousin Barnabas’ costume party. There it was, a monumental silver concoction of satin and lace. Naomi Collins looked so much the same as Liz, wearing it. He couldn’t help remembering the process of Liz getting into that dress. And, God help him, remembering the very much more enjoyable process of helping her out of that dress, later on in the night of the party.

Liz had worn her hair up with this outfit, with a sparkling tiara, while Naomi’s hairdo was a softer creation of ringlets. Bill couldn’t remember what jewelry Liz wore with the dress. But he knew for a fact that the ear rings Naomi had on tonight were among the family heirlooms Liz took such pride in wearing.

Bill thought, _It’s a God-damned torment seeing her look so like Liz, when Liz and I are 172 years apart._

He heard Naomi Collins asking him, “Is something the matter, Mr. Malloy?”

“I’m all right, ma’am,” he managed to say. “Thank you. Thank you for your hospitality.”

“Naomi,” came the voice of Joshua, in his usual disapproving tones, “you must not neglect our other guest.”

_In other words,_ Bill thought grimly, _he’s saying, “Wife, get away from that man who keeps staring at you like he wants to undress you.”_

As Naomi and Barnabas walked over to the Countess Dupres, Jeremiah whispered to Bill, “Are you really all right?”

“Yes,” Bill managed. “Sorry.” He knew he had to give Jeremiah some kind of explanation. So he struggled along with, “Something about your sister-in-law almost reminded me of … something. Whatever it was, it’s gone.”

Jeremiah nodded. But he was still eyeing Bill with a frowning, uncertain look.

Bill had suspected this dinner was going to be a trial. Now he knew it would be an absolute nightmare.

Before, he’d just reckoned he would have to deal with unpleasant company, unfamiliar foods, and figuring out the rules of 18th-century table manners. Now he knew he’d be doing all of that while fighting not to stare at Naomi Collins.

If he allowed himself to look at her, he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to stop. And he was pretty danged certain Joshua Collins would not take kindly to such behavior on his part.

_That’s all I need: for the head of the Collins family to challenge me to a duel for paying improper attentions to his wife._

In his chilly voice, Joshua addressed the assembled company, “Shall we proceed to the dining room?”

So here it was: the moment of truth. Time for Bill to find out how quickly he could pick up the dinner party etiquette of 1795. He guessed maybe it was a blessing that he had this smaller problem to focus on. He thought, _If I put everything I’ve got into making sure no 18 th-century Emily Post finds fault with my table manners, maybe I can stop being so all-fired neurotic over how much Naomi Collins looks like my wife! _

Lesson One was that the ladies proceeded to the dining room first. Naomi offered her arm to the countess and the two of them strolled in together, followed by Abigail. Bill thought Miss Collins looked none too happy at playing third fiddle to her sister-in-law and the Frenchwoman. Joshua Collins made his stately way into the dining room next, with Jeremiah and Barnabas close behind him and Bill bringing up the rear.

Bill had been right, that morning, when he thought this room would be insanely bright with the chandelier fully lit. The 100 or so candles gleamed extravagantly off the gold paint and in the wall mirrors at each end of the room. Bill thought, _It looks like we’ll be dining inside one of those wicked big jewel-crusted Faberge eggs._

Where to sit was not a question he had to worry about. Bill was the last one into the room, and there were only enough places set for those who would be dining.

Naomi presided over the end of the table farthest from the parlor door, with the countess at her right and Abigail at her left. Joshua seated himself at the near end of the table, with Jeremiah at his right and Barnabas at his left. That placed Bill in the one chair remaining, between Barnabas and the countess, with no one directly opposite.

He certainly had no complaints about that. It was better to face an empty space than to encounter the beady glare of Miss Abigail Collins all through dinner. Bad enough having her sit diagonally across from him.

What he was actually facing was a ridiculous amount of food. At a quick count, the table was loaded down with eight large platters of elaborately displayed meats. There were two silver soup tureens, one at each end of the table, and multiple smaller plates scattered around, some holding what he reckoned were pickled vegetables and others holding crackers.

Two of the men who had lugged Bill’s bath supplies, Charles Stover and young Hinckley, were circulating among the diners taking their drinks orders. The two had smartened up their appearance with fancy matching frock coats that they hadn’t worn while hauling his bath water around the house.

Speaking of water, Bill knew he had read somewhere that no one ever drank water in the olden days. But when he heard Miss Collins ordering water, he figured it was safe to do the same. Everyone else also requested water along with various other stronger beverages.

Naomi and Joshua ladled out the soup. Naomi served the women and Joshua served the men. The soup turned out to be a reassuringly ordinary split pea with ham.

A lot of the food on the table seemed ordinary enough. But Bill had never seen so danged much of it, not even at his family’s biggest Thanksgiving dinners.

Come to think of it, it also made a striking contrast with the one dish casserole-type meals Mrs. Johnson typically prepared for Bill’s own Collins family. Not to mention how it contrasted with the sandwiches that used to be his Collinses’ standard fare, before Liz and Bill got married and Mrs. Johnson moved in.

While Collinses and their guests made their way through the soup, the Countess Dupres commented, “I see you favor the old style of seating, Mr. Collins. You have not yet adopted the new fashion of seating women alternately with men.”

“Indeed I have not,” Joshua replied. “Not everything that is new is worthwhile. Although I am certain my son might wish to debate with me on that point.”

“Not at all, Father,” Barnabas answered mildly. “Many old ways have much to recommend them. Though I do confess that I enjoy the new fashion of seating. I find it adds piquancy to a gathering when one has greater opportunities to converse with the ladies present.”

The noise his father made in reply to that would have been described as a snort, if it had been made by anyone less high-fallutin’ than the head of the Collins family. Joshua observed, “Fortunately our gathering tonight is intimate enough that you should be able to converse with anyone you choose. You will not be forced to endure a dinner lacking in piquancy.”

As that dinner dragged on, Bill came to the conclusion that Joshua’s statement had been a masterpiece of deadpan humor. Either that or he and Bill had very different definitions of “piquancy.”    

There was nothing piquant about this conversation. For that matter, there wasn’t much conversation.

The only person with much to say was the countess. She continued her inexhaustible commentary on the failings of all things American, compared to their counterparts in France or Martinique. All the while she punctuated her comments with energetic, stereotypically French-seeming hand gestures.

If no one but the countess had spoken all evening, Bill might have found her exaggerated performance mildly entertaining. Unfortunately, from time to time various Collinses saw fit to put in their oars.

Stover and Hinckley removed the soup tureens and bowls, replacing the tureens with two platters of sauce-drenched fish. As they had with the soup, Naomi and Joshua served the fish to their guests. Bill’s best guess was that the fish was cod. But the white sauce, apparently seasoned with a mountain of nutmeg, rendered its actual taste unrecognizable.

In their turn, the remains of the unknown fish were removed. Everyone began helping themselves to the meat dishes. Either it was a breach of etiquette to ask your neighbor to pass you anything or serve you, or else no one at this table felt like talking to each other. Each person seemed content with serving themselves from the few dishes they could reach.

Not that Bill felt cheated at only being able to sample a few of the meats. _He_ would have thought the meat course could have stayed in a warming oven while the soup and fish were dealt with. But he wasn’t an expert on 18th-century cuisine. Maybe people in this time period preferred letting their meat go cold before they ate it. Maybe they liked seeing it swimming with blobs of congealed grease.

Bill tried a bit of the beef dish in front of him. Being a roast, it didn’t have as much swimming grease as the sauced and boiled things. He also ate a fair amount of crackers and pickled cauliflower. He could reach both those plates easily. And neither of them was awash in cold fat or nutmeg.

When there were still vast amounts of food on the table, Stover and Hinckley reappeared. They started removing the platters of meat. Bill hoped the staff was permitted to help themselves to the leftovers. Or maybe those meats would return on subsequent days in the form of pies and stews.

When all the plates were removed, the two men departed with the tablecloth as well. For some reason everyone stayed seated at the table. That reason became obvious when Stover and Hinckley returned with a second tablecloth. With this in place – a neat trick which they accomplished without bumping into any dinner guests or enveloping them in the tablecloth – they set to work once again, reloading the table with food.

This time the fare consisted of four pies, several more meat dishes, plates of assorted tarts and what looked like toasted canapés, and a centerpiece created from a massive selection of salad items. A three-layered silver tray was heaped with shavings of ice. In amid the ice nestled little crystal bowls of fruits, vegetables, and what Bill guessed were various kinds of pickled fish.

_I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,_ Bill thought. _There was too much food for the seven of us the first time around. Now we’re facing a whole second dinner’s-worth?_

He guessed it helped explain why none of his dinner companions had been eating with much enthusiasm. Everyone but him knew they had to pace themselves.

Or maybe nobody wanted to eat much of anything because the sooner they finished dinner, the sooner they could get the hell away from each other.

Well, nobody wanted to eat much except the countess. She seemed to be thoroughly enjoying herself. She ate with gusto while keeping up her eloquent condemnation of American cookery. It made Bill think of that old joke about the restaurant where the food is terrible and the portions are too small.

Miss Abigail barely spoke two words throughout dinner. Presumably, if she spoke, it would be too hard for her to keep that pursed-lipped disapproving stare on her face. Bill thought that chewing while keeping her lips pursed must be kind of a challenge, too.

Joshua listened haughtily to the countess’ jibes. Occasionally he seized a strategic moment and stated an acidic challenge to her opinions.

Poor Barnabas struggled to keep things civil. Many of his father’s comments, Barnabas tried to soften and turn into some sort of compliment to the countess. From time to time Jeremiah attempted to second his nephew’s efforts. But for the most part Jeremiah seemed sunk in uncharacteristic gloom. He ate sparingly, drank steadily, and stared morosely at the table.

As for Naomi Collins …

As dinner limped onward, Bill cared less and less about teaching himself 18th-century table manners. He forgot to worry about what the hell he was supposed to eat when. And he forgot his resolution not to look at the mistress of Collins House.

He forgot all of it. He was too busy watching a battle play itself out between Mr. and Mrs. Joshua Collins.

Like her son, Naomi strove to maintain the illusion of peace and good will. When her husband voiced some barbed interjection or cast aspersions at the French, she interspersed graceful comments that took some of the sting out of Joshua’s insults. When the countess said something so extreme it looked as if Joshua would burst a blood vessel, Naomi tried to steer the conversation into less dangerous waters.

And in reply to each of her attempts at peace-making, her husband ruthlessly shot her down.

Countess Dupres remarked that household staffing and daily routines were clearly different in America than in France or Martinique. Naomi observed that when Josette became mistress of Collins House, she would of course make the decisions on how the household would be run. Joshua stated, “It will be quite a change to see this household operate with something approaching efficiency.”

The countess expressed her surprise that Americans seemed not to use wine in their cooking. Naomi began speaking of the challenges of the local climate, and the fact that the limited regions of the United States in which wine-making was practical necessitated a focus on other cooking ingredients. Joshua cut her off with the merciless comment, “It is ironic, my dear, to hear _you_ speak of limiting one’s reliance upon wine.”

“Father!” Barnabas exclaimed. “That remark was uncalled-for.”

The countess said in a tone of sudden sympathy, “I would like to learn more of American wine-making. Please go on, Mrs. Collins.”

Blushing in humiliation and staring down at her plate, Mrs. Collins murmured, “My husband knows more of these matters than I do.”

Bill noticed that Naomi had been holding her wine glass when Joshua spoke. But after his words to her, she set the glass down. When Stover next circulated among the diners and asked if he could replenish Mrs. Collins’ glass, she refused the offered wine with another angry blush. Bill had the impression that only her pride was stopping her tears from breaking loose.

Over and over the pattern repeated itself.

Naomi dared to say something. Joshua demolished whatever she had said, with relentless cruelty. And Naomi accepted what he said to her, in silence or with a whispered, “Yes, Joshua.”

Barely noticing the taste of anything, Bill made his way through some salad fixings and a piece of what was probably venison pie. The more he heard and saw of the Collins couple’s interactions, the more he began to think that the expression “his blood boiled” might be more than just a phrase.

Each time Naomi wilted at her husband’s venomous remarks, Bill’s anger crept closer to the boiling point. He couldn’t help contrasting Naomi’s cowed reactions with Liz’s indomitable control of every situation she found herself in.

_Naomi could be as strong and confident as Liz is_. _I think she would be, if her husband didn’t beat her down every time she opens her mouth._

He had seen this kind of thing before. He had seen it too damned many times.

Jessie Osgood, who’d been Ned Calder’s secretary at the cannery until Ned resigned, and who now had the unenviable job of being secretary to Roger – she had spent years making excuses for her husband’s cruelty. Insisting that he wasn’t doing anything wrong. Buying in to all of his claims that everything was her fault. Locking herself in the ladies’ room for hours at a time crying at the end of some workdays because she was afraid to go home and face him. But still trying to convince her worried co-workers that everything was fine.

Bill didn’t like to think of how many years it took before Jessie decided to remove that scumbag from her life. On the day her divorce was finalized, Ned and Bill took her out for dinner and champagne at a ritzy restaurant in Bangor. They had also each given her a dozen roses. Jessie dried one rose from each of their bouquets. She still kept them on her desk at work: to remind herself, she said, never again to believe that she was worthless. Bill also sent a congratulatory bottle of champagne to young Frank Garner, who had served as Jessie’s lawyer in his first solo case without his father riding shotgun. Not that Jessie could have afforded the services of Garner and Garner. Liz had engaged them on Jessie’s behalf and had secretly paid most of their bill.

But not all such stories had happy endings. Watching Naomi Collins tonight made Bill think of Violet Tenney.

Her husband Pete had worked with Bill in the fishing fleet in 1950 or thereabouts. Bill remembered seeing them at the Blue Whale together, night after night. He remembered how Violet used to look: demoralized, frightened, huddling in on herself, her makeup plastered thick in the attempt to hide her bruises. He remembered Pete, too: loudly drunk, accusing his wife of not letting him have a well-earned drink if she suggested they go home, calling her a whore whenever he got the idea in his head that some man in the place had glanced at her.

One morning, before the fleet set out, Bill took Pete Tenney aside and told him to show Violet more respect. He had emphasized that order by beating Pete up – worse than he’d beaten anyone else in his life, before or since. Pete hadn’t gone to the hospital, but he certainly wasn’t up to coming in to work for a few days after that. Unfortunately, he _had_ been up to something else.

Two mornings after Bill’s little talk with her husband, Violet Tenney sought Bill out on the docks, as the sun was coming up over the sea. All the makeup in the world couldn’t hide her bruises now. There wasn’t any hiding the way she was limping, either, or the way she held one arm very still against her side as if it hurt her too much to move it.

She wasn’t crying. In a strange, flat little voice she begged Bill to leave her and Pete alone. Not to get involved. Not to try and do anything for her, ever again. She said that Pete had told her it was all her fault Bill beat him up like that. She said that if anything like this happened again, Pete was going to kill her.

Shortly after that, the Tenneys moved out of town. Away from Collinsport to who knows where. Bill had no idea what had happened to them. Whether Violet had ever broken away from her husband. Or even whether she was still alive.  

And now here was Naomi Collins, with the same defeated look as Bill had seen so often on the faces of Jessie Osgood and Violet Tenney. Here was Mr. Joshua God-damn Collins, grand and glorious lord of the manor, thinking himself so much better than all the world, dishing out the same damned filth to his wife as Jim Osgood and Pete Tenney gave to theirs.

This time it wasn’t a surprise to Bill when Stover and Hinckley started clearing the table, while there was still enough food on it to comfortably feed all the office staff of Collins Enterprises. Once again they cleared away the tablecloth. Still not a one of the diners made any move to leave the table.

_Don’t tell me,_ thought Bill. _It can’t possibly mean they’re going to bring more food!_

Sure enough, they did, though this batch of food arrived with no third tablecloth. And at least, to Bill’s relief, this course was pretty clearly intended as dessert. Onto the dark, gleaming surface of the table was placed a decorative pyramid of oranges, apples, dried apricots and prunes, along with plates of little fruit tarts, crystal bowls of nuts, and several plates of crackers with what Bill would describe as cheese balls. He guessed there was probably a fancier name for them in 1795.

With Stover and Hinckley once again soliciting drinks orders, Barnabas commented to Bill, “I can whole-heartedly recommend the port. I brought several crates of it home with me when I returned from Martinique.”

Since he’d abstained throughout the rest of the meal, Bill figured one glass of port couldn’t hurt. On his first drink of it, he thought that had probably been one danged stupid idea.

As the warmth of it raced down his throat, it also seemed to go straight up to his brain. He thought, _Sure, Bill, that’s exactly what you need. A little something to lower your inhibitions._

In the mood he was in, it wouldn’t take much to make him barge up to Joshua Collins and tell the S.O.B. precisely what he thought of him. Or challenge him to a duel. Or just try to pound his damned face in.

_Violence didn’t do any good when you tried to help Violet Tenney. It won’t help anybody now._

_You weren’t Violet’s knight in shining armor. You can’t be Naomi Collins’ knight, either._

_But,_ he thought, _a man can dream, can’t he?_

_It won’t cause any problems if I kill Joshua Collins, will it? He’s already sired his children. It shouldn’t destroy anybody’s family tree if someone helps him depart this life a little early._

After granting time for some token nibbling at dessert, Joshua apparently decided that the dinner had worn out its welcome. He announced this decision in his own inimitable fashion.

“Are you finished, Naomi?” he inquired. “Under the circumstances, I think we can forgo the traditional after-dinner sherry. I am sure our guests will be grateful to be spared any unfortunate scenes.”

His wife had been gazing disconsolately downward. At his words, she jerked her head up. Eyes wide and cheeks suddenly gone pale, she stared at her husband as though he had slapped her in the face.

“Joshua!” she gasped in protest.

Blandly he said, “I fail to see why my statement upsets you, my dear. I simply assumed that Madame must be tired from her journey. It is our duty as her hosts to allow her to retire early.”

The mistress of Collins House rose to her feet. She swayed as she did so. Naomi grabbed the edge of the table to hold herself steady. To Bill it looked as if her pride and anger had as large a role in holding her upright as her grasp on the table.

For once she was outraged enough to issue a challenge. “That is not what you meant, Joshua,” Naomi declared. “You and everyone else in this room are perfectly well aware of that.”

Where the confrontation might have led, no one was to know.

Watching Naomi and Joshua, Bill Malloy clutched his wine glass far harder than he knew. Before Joshua could reply or anyone else could intervene, the glass shattered in his grasp.

Amid everyone’s startled exclamations, Bill jumped up. He stared in disbelief at the shattered mess on the table and the gleaming port wine dripping like blood from his hand.

_Jesus Christ!_ Bill thought. _I thought that sort of thing only happens in the movies!_

“I’m sorry,” Bill managed to say. “If someone can bring me a towel, I’ll be happy to clean it up …”

“You needn’t trouble yourself,” Joshua replied dismissively. “As I seem fated to continually remind you, the servants are here to see to this sort of thing.”

Barnabas had jumped to his feet at the same time Bill did. He asked Bill now, “Are you all right? Your hand isn’t injured?”

“I don’t think it is.” Bill flexed his hand and looked at it front and back. It seemed there was nothing on it but port.

The brouhaha over Bill’s wine glass gave Naomi the chance to retreat from an open conflict. In her normal soft tones she said now, “If you don’t mind, Joshua, I believe I will retire early after all. Good night, countess. Mr. Malloy. I apologize for abandoning you so early in the evening.”

“Think nothing of it, Mrs. Collins,” said the countess. She had risen to avoid the spread of port across the table.

Joshua, Jeremiah and Barnabas all bowed as Naomi departed, so Bill followed their example. He was relieved to see that Naomi’s steps as she left the room seemed steady and unwavering.

“I will retire as well,” declared the righteous Miss Abigail. “I can never truly consider a day well spent if it does not close with reflection upon the scriptures.”

Again the four men bowed. When his sister was gone, Joshua stated in his turn, “I believe I will also retire to my chamber. I have correspondence to attend to. Forgive me for deserting you, madam. I leave you in good hands: I have no doubt that my brother, my son and Mr. Malloy will be delighted to entertain you.”

Away limped the master of Collins House, to the accompaniment of their various “good nights.” Bill was left with the Frenchwoman, the two younger Collins men – and Stover, Hinckley and now Riggs, who had arrived bearing a stack of towels.

Stover handed Bill a towel. Bill dipped it in his water glass and washed the sticky wine from his hand.

“A miraculous accomplishment, Monsieur Malloy!” the Countess Dupres grinned. “In one move you secured the departure of those who would limit our enjoyment of the evening. If I’d known that result could be so simply achieved, I would have asked you to break a glass a great deal earlier.”

In mild reproach, Barnabas pointed out to her, “May I remind you, countess: my mother is among the people whose departure you are celebrating.”

She bestowed a smile on him and linked her arm with his. “Do not be foolish, dear boy. It should be obvious that Mrs. Collins is not the target of my remark. Now, come along, messieurs. I have been informed that the three of you will be delighted to entertain me.”

So away they went. As they left the dining room, young Hinckley was starting to clear away dessert. Stover toweled up the spilled port. Riggs was hunting for glass shards with a little silver whisk broom and dustpan.

In the parlor, with a closed door dividing them from Riggs, Stover and Hinckley, the countess dropped her smile and looked purposeful instead. “ _Bien_. Now to work. I have not forgotten, monsieur,” she said to Bill, “that this afternoon I promised you a reading of the cards.”

_Just my luck,_ thought Bill. He made an escape attempt. “If you’re tired from your journey, countess, the reading can wait—”

“The cards can always wait,” she countered, in what was presumably meant as a meaningful tone. “You, on the other hand, cannot. The cards may hold the key to the mystery of who you are.” To Barnabas, still at her side, she ordered, “The table we used this afternoon is well suited to the purpose. Bring it over here into the light.”

With a little bow, Barnabas went to obey her. Jeremiah hurried to assist him.

The table in question, which uncle and nephew carried nearer to the fireplace from a far corner of the room, looked like it really was a card table. Only, Bill thought, it was a wealthy 18th-century family’s version of that item of furniture, with an embossed leather top and lot of gold trim. Jeremiah and Barnabas also brought over two chairs, and Bill told himself, _You might as well face it. There’s no way you’re getting out of this._

Bill would never have guessed that the countess’ dress had pockets. But out of a pocket, concealed by voluminous billows of fabric, Countess Dupres produced a deck of cards. They were nearly twice as large as regular playing cards. And it looked like there was a hell of a lot of them.

With the card table and chairs arranged to the countess’ specifications, Jeremiah and Barnabas returned to what Bill was starting to think of as their usual posts. Barnabas stood by the bay window, where he could glance outside from time to time. Jeremiah made a bee-line for the table with the decanter and glasses.

Seeing Jeremiah stand there with a troubled frown on his face and a full glass in his hand, Bill couldn’t help being reminded of Roger.

Not that he thought he should assign much blame to Jeremiah for developing this particular habit. He didn’t even really blame Roger much for it, any more.

Of all the lessons he had learned so far from this little trip to the past, the most striking lesson was that, apparently, life with the Collinses in any time period could easily drive a man to drink.

_Or a woman,_ Bill thought uncomfortably. _That is, if Joshua’s fixation on his wife’s drinking habits is anything to judge by_.

“Now then,” said the countess, settling herself in her chair. “You will please to sit opposite me, Monsieur Malloy.”

He took his seat. The countess held up a fan of four cards toward him. “Choose one of these and hand it to me.”

He obeyed her, thinking, _Here goes nothin’._

Smiling enigmatically, the countess placed the card face up in the center of the table. “This card will represent you,” she said. “It is _le Chevalier de Coupes._ The Knight of Cups.”

“So you are a knight, Mr. Malloy,” commented Barnabas, doing his best to sound light-hearted. “When the countess read the cards for me this afternoon, I was the Magician.”

“Have the kindness not to interrupt, _mon cher_ ,” directed his future aunt-in-law. Barnabas assented with a bow.

“Now,” she went on, “I presume you will be satisfied with a reading of 21 cards – rather than the full deck of 78? I can read the full deck for you if you wish. But I suspect that might provide more detail than you truly seek.”

_You hit_ that _nail on the head, countess,_ Bill thought.

“Thanks,” he told her. “Twenty-one will be fine.”

The noblewoman shuffled the cards a few times and then slid them across the table toward Bill. She commanded, “Divide these into three roughly equal stacks. Place one to the left and one to the right, and leave the third where it is.”

This accomplished, her next direction was, “Now choose one of the three stacks and hand it to me.”

With another mental shrug, Bill chose the middle stack.

“ _Très bien_ ,” said the countess. She moved the other two stacks to a corner of the table. “Now we shall see what the cards have to say to you.”

Bill thought, _I can hardly wait._

Countess Dupres commenced placing the cards on the table. She arranged them in three rows with their faces up, the Knight of Cups at the center of the middle row. When all 21 were laid out she paused for some moments to examine them in silence.

“It is not a comforting reading, Monsieur Malloy,” she reported at last. “Interesting, yes; very. Hopeful, perhaps. Comforting, it is not.”

_That’s no surprise,_ thought Bill. He leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms across his chest and asked, “So what uncomfortable things do the cards want to tell me?”

The countess lightly touched two fingers to the card of the Knight of Cups. “As I told you,” she said, “this card is you. _Le Chevalier de Coupes_. It tells us you are a man to rely upon. A man who can be trusted. When once you have chosen a path, you follow that path without flinching, no matter the darkness that surrounds you. The cup in the knight’s hand tells that you give freely of yourself. At times you give too freely. Like a cup that generously pours forth its contents until it is empty, so you give of yourself to the point of sacrifice. Until you have nothing left.”

_You know, countess,_ he thought, _you only gave me four cards to choose from. Seems to me you created a self-fulfilling prophecy. What do you want to bet the other three cards could all sound just as much like me?_

“Here directly above your card,” she continued, “is _l’Impératrice._ The Empress. There is a woman of strength who means more to you than anything else in your life. If you hold firmly to your faith in her, your quest will bring you the results you desire.”

_That’s good to know,_ thought Bill. It annoyed him to realize he was starting to care, just a little, about what else the countess might have to say.

Briefly she rested her hand on the card at the upper left corner. “Here,” she said, “helping to define you, is _la Force_ – that is to say, strength.  Your life is built firmly on the foundation of your strength. But between _la Force_ and _l’Impératrice_ is _la Reine de Coupes_ ; the Queen of Cups, who shows that you fight your battles with persuasion as much as with force.”

She paused again for another moment of study. “Here in these cards to the left,” she said, “we see your past. You have won much success; you have gained much that you desire, through the power of your own efforts. Nothing has come to you that you have not earned. You have overcome terrible challenges. Here, in the form of the five of swords, is one challenge that you conquered – a danger that nearly destroyed you. And here, just to the left of your own card, is _le Char_ : the Chariot. It shows us victory. But this victory is moral, not material. It is the knowledge that you have made the right choice; that you have done what is right – regardless of the pain that choice has brought to you.”

Against his will, Bill’s thoughts flashed back to a January night when he sat alone at a table in the Blue Whale. A night when he wrestled with the problems of Liz, Roger, and Burke Devlin. When he struggled to find the right course to take, and he believed that the struggle might well tear him apart.

_Come on, Bill,_ he argued with himself. _You know these fortune-telling types can make anything sound meaningful. You might as well go to that Chinese restaurant in Bangor and ask them to sell you a box of fortune cookies. I’m sure you could get just as much wisdom out of that._

Meanwhile the countess seemed to be facing some struggle of her own. She bit her lower lip and frowned at the cards, as though she wished she could compel them to say something different from the message they spread out before her.

“Your past shows much success,” she reiterated. “Your present and your future show us a darker picture. Perhaps it is the darkness of your loss of memory. But I fear there is more to it. I fear there is much more.”

Barnabas Collins had finally left his station at the bay window and wandered over to the card table. He stood beside the countess, looking down at the cards with interest. Helpfully he suggested, “Perhaps when Mr. Malloy recovers his memory, the darkness will be lightened.”

“Perhaps,” the countess repeated. But she continued to scowl at the cards.

In reluctant tones she began to speak again. “Here around your card is the present; here to the right is the future. Just to the right of _l’Impératrice_ is _la Justice_. But this card is reversed. You are to be judged, but there will be no justice in the result. Here at the right of _la Justice_ is _le Chevalier d’Épées_ – the Knight of Swords. But he, also, is reversed. He will be an enemy to you – an enemy who will stop at nothing to destroy you.”

She reached toward one card and then stopped with her hand hovering above it, as if she could not bring herself to touch it. Glancing at the card, Bill saw it bore a colorful image of a skeleton holding a scythe, standing in a field of flowers. Poking out of the dirt here and there between the flowers was an occasional human hand or foot.

“Here, just to the right of your own card, is _la Mort_. The card of Death. And it, once again, is reversed. The death card, monsieur, does not always symbolize death itself. It symbolizes something coming to an end, and perhaps continuing onward in a new form. At the very least, it is a warning.”

The countess looked up from the cards until her gaze met his. Bill was surprised to see compassion for him in her eyes.

Barnabas asked, “What does it mean when the death card is reversed? Does that, instead, symbolize life?”

“Perhaps,” she answered yet again. “Or perhaps it is simply telling us to change how we think of death.”

Countess Dupres looked down once more and continued her litany of cards.

“At the right of _la Mort_ is _le Pendu_. The hanged man. He signifies accusation. Betrayal. He says you will be made an example of. You will be subjected to public humiliation.”

_Great,_ thought Bill. _This gets better all the time._

“To his right, _la Lune_ ; the moon. It tells us that the future is obscured. It is shrouded in mystery.”

_No kidding. I could have told you that without any tarot cards._

“Here just beneath your card, in the very present, is _la Tour_ – the Tower.” The countess closed her eyes for a moment. Bill thought that he actually saw her shudder.

He looked at the card. The tower in question was apparently being struck by a bolt of lightning. Two little medieval-looking guys in tunics and tights were falling out of it and bashing their heads on the ground.

“The Tower,” said the countess, opening her eyes again, “speaks of a disruption in your life. An abrupt and perhaps a terrible change.”

She hurried onward. The next cards did not seem to be much of an improvement. “Here is _la Roue_ – the Wheel. It reminds us of our powerlessness in the grip of fate. Here beside the Wheel is the seven of swords. Perhaps this card signifies the fight that is ahead of you. Perhaps it also tells you to look deeper; to cut away all the superficial things that dwell only on the surface of your existence. To find what truly matters in the darkness below.”

_Perhaps it also tells me,_ Bill thought, _that anyone can say these cards mean whatever they want them to mean._

_How the hell did you see all of that in a picture of seven swords?_

At last the countess seemed to see something that pleased her. She even, amazingly, smiled.

It was a faint smile. But it was still a smile.

“And here,” she said, “at the end. The 21st card. It is the two of cups. Remember, Monsieur Malloy: cups are your sign. You are the Knight of Cups. And to see two cups here, together: I believe they are you and she. Your Empress. The woman who means more to you than all others; the woman in whom you must keep your faith. I believe that, working together, the two of you can yet achieve your salvation. There is still a chance. This card tells us there is reason to hope.”

The Countess Dupres heaved a long sigh. She looked at Bill, with sympathy and apology in her smile.

“There is much more that the cards could tell you,” she said. “But I think, perhaps, that you have heard enough?”

“Yes,” Bill said heavily. “Thank you. I have heard enough.”

Jeremiah Collins stepped up to the card table. It occurred to Bill that Jeremiah hadn’t spoken a word since all of them left the dining room. Not that he had spoken many words in the dining room, either.

Bill had only known the man for one day. But from everything he had seen, such silence on Jeremiah’s part was very far from typical.

Now Jeremiah said, “If the reading is finished, might I prevail upon Mr. Malloy to come with me to my chamber? If you do not mind, Mr. Malloy, there are matters I would like to discuss with you in private.”

“Of course,” answered Bill. He wondered what had been bugging Jeremiah all evening. It wasn’t the _tarot_ card reading, and it wasn’t anything that had happened during dinner. Now that he thought back, he thought Jeremiah had seemed troubled ever since … ever since Barnabas had introduced Bill to Naomi Collins.

“Good night, Mr. Collins,” Bill continued, to Barnabas. He only felt slightly self-conscious as he bowed to Barnabas and Barnabas bowed back to him. Bill figured he should probably bow somewhat lower to a lady than to a gentleman. So he gave that a try when he bowed to the countess. Certainly nothing in her expression suggested that he’d fouled anything up.

“Good night, countess,” he said to her. “Thank you for the reading.”

“Good night, _mon ami_ ,” she replied, as she held out her hand for him to kiss. Obediently, he did so, feeling only a little bit like a jackass. The countess told him as he straightened up and released her hand, “I hope the message of the cards brings you more hope than it brings you pain.”

When the two of them had started up the stairs, Jeremiah said in an attempt at light conversation, “I suppose you can count yourself lucky that the countess continued all the way through your reading. Barnabas told me that when she read the cards for him this afternoon, something distressed her partway through and she swept all the cards from the table.”

Bill thought, _It sounds to me like Barnabas was luckier than I was._ But he said, “The countess has less of a personal connection with me than she does with your nephew. I guess that made it less difficult for her to prophesy death, disruption, a deadly enemy and public humiliation.”

They walked to Jeremiah’s room without conversing further. The room was warm in a literal as well as a figurative sense. A fire crackled cheerfully in the black marble fireplace. Bill thought the place looked just the way he would expect Jeremiah Collins’ room to look: richly furnished in a restrained sort of way. That was, if anything with that much red velvet upholstery could be described as “restrained.”

After closing the door behind them, Jeremiah went to stand by the fireplace. Bill could see three chairs in the room. But Jeremiah did not offer him a seat. It seemed to be symbolic of the direction this discussion was likely to take.

_This is not going to be a friendly chat._

Jeremiah said, “According to the countess’ cards you are a man to rely upon. A man in whom we can trust. I would like very much to believe that her cards are correct on this question. Unfortunately, I must tell you that the _tarot_ cards’ verdict on this matter is not one in which I can place any faith.”

_Here it is,_ Bill thought. _The moment I hoped I could put off for a damn sight longer than this._

He’d hoped he would have a longer time at Collins House – a longer time for him to learn what the hell was going on – before this confrontation came. But he supposed he should have expected this.

Jeremiah Collins was far too intelligent a man to let the wool be pulled over his eyes for long.

Bill asked him, “What’s happened to make you decide you can’t trust me?”

Honest regret showed on Jeremiah’s face. “I have wanted to believe you, Mr. Malloy. I have tried very hard to believe your story. I am sorry to tell you that I can no longer do so. I cannot believe you are what you say you are.”

Before Bill could come up with any kind of answer, Jeremiah continued, “Let me say all of this before you reply. Quite frankly, I can no longer believe that you have lost your memory. The idea seemed strange to me from the beginning, since you remembered your own name. I know that you gave me an explanation for that. The explanation might have seemed sufficient, if that was the only anomaly in your story. But it is not alone.

“Last night after they put Sarah to bed, Miss Wick confided in my nephew that something did not seem to fit about your story. Barnabas told me Miss Wick regretted that her action in this matter might bring trouble upon you. But she felt it was her duty to confide in us what she had observed. She told Barnabas that when you and she were _en route_ to Collinwood, nothing in your speech or actions suggested any amnesia. In particular, she said you had mentioned to her that you are from Maine.

“Another member of our household has also confided in Barnabas. Today Ben Stokes came to him and reported that he encountered you outside on the grounds last night, in the middle of the night. He said that when you met, you mistook him for someone else. You greeted him with that other man’s name. I think you must agree this seems a most unlikely action for a man who has no memory of his past.

“The additional fact that we have found no one in Collinsport who has seen you before; that we have found no innocent, logical means of explaining what might have brought you to our road, on our hill, to the spot where you just happened to discover the carriage accident …

“And again, tonight, when something about my sister-in-law so clearly distressed you – and when what most troubled you appeared to be your memories, rather than any lack thereof – I am sorry, Mr. Malloy,” Jeremiah concluded grimly. “I wanted to believe that you are an honest man. I wanted to believe that you are a man whom any honest person could freely trust and could look upon as a friend. But my loyalty must be to my family, and to all of those who depend upon us. I believe that you have lied to us. I believe you have won our hospitality through false pretenses. I would like to hear the true explanation for these actions before I demand that you leave this house.”

_The true explanation?_ Bill thought. _You really want to hear it?_

“I am waiting for an answer,” Jeremiah Collins informed him.

_Hell,_ wondered Bill, _what can it hurt to tell the truth?_

If Jeremiah planned to kick him out already, then things weren’t likely to get much worse for him if Bill told the true story and his gracious host didn’t buy it. And if he _did_ tell the truth, at least there was a chance that Jeremiah would believe him. A chance that Jeremiah would believe him and might be willing to help.

Bill said, “The true explanation won’t be easy to believe.”

“Suppose you tell me, Mr. Malloy. Let me form my own judgment on that question.”

_All right, then,_ thought Bill Malloy. _You asked for it._

“The true explanation,” Bill said, “is that I came here from another time. I’m from Collinsport. I was born here and grew up here. I live in Collinwood – in the house your work crews are building now. When I live there, Collinwood is the great house of the Collins family. It’s been that for almost two centuries. This house is the Old House; it was abandoned for years. I was sent back in time from the year 1967.”

Since meeting this famous ancestor of the woman he loved, Bill had formed the impression that Jeremiah Collins was seldom at a loss for words. The famous ancestor was definitely at a loss for words now.

Jeremiah stood there beside his fireplace. He stared at Bill with a look of utter amazement. He opened his mouth, he shut it again, and then he gave a dazed shake of his head.

“I am sorry,” Jeremiah said at last. “I cannot think what on earth I can possibly say to that.”

“I told you it wouldn’t be easy to believe.”

“It most certainly is not.”

_I may as well keep going,_ Bill thought. _Wouldn’t do any good to try turning back now._

He suggested, “You want me to tell you the rest of the story? It probably can’t hurt. You’ve already heard the craziest part.”

For a moment Jeremiah contemplated that question. Then he answered, “Yes. Why not? It should give me the time I need in order to decide if you are simply insane, or if you are the most imaginative liar since Baron von Münchausen.”

Bill thought, _That’s a great start._

He told himself Jeremiah did not need to hear a detailed account of his entire life. But probably giving _some_ details wouldn’t hurt. It might go a long way toward convincing Jeremiah that Bill hadn’t made this whole crazy story up.

_Here goes,_ he thought.

He began, “My name’s William Edward Malloy. I was born in Collinsport May 10th, 1911. Mine’s the second generation of our family born in Collinsport. My grandfather came to Maine from New York and his parents came over from Ireland. I grew up here and went to school here. After high school I joined my father in the fishing business. He’d been an independent fisherman all the time I was growing up. Then in 1932 – when there was a big economic depression all across the country – my dad decided we couldn’t make ends meet as independent contractors anymore. We hired on with the Collins Enterprises fishing fleet. A lot of the other fishermen in this area did that same thing around then. Collins Enterprises was struggling some too, then, like everybody. But they’d always been financially sensible enough that they were able to keep going. They were even able to hire new workers, to help keep the local fishermen – like us – out of poverty. In my day, a lot of people around Collinsport owe their livelihoods to Collins Enterprises.”

Bill decided that wasn’t a strong enough statement. “No,” he corrected himself, “not just their livelihoods. Their lives.

“In 1941 the United States went to war. The war was already going on for a while in Europe and Asia. It’s come to be known as the Second World War.”

Jeremiah was listening in apparent fascination. He seemed not at all inclined to interrupt.

Bill went on, “There was a First World War, too, of course; that happened when I was a kid. Anyway, I joined up in December 1941. I was stationed in England for a while; then I served in Germany. The war ended summer 1945. I got out of the Army in January 1946. I came home to Collinsport and was re-hired by Collins Enterprises. Old Mr. Jamison Collins died around that time, and his daughter Elizabeth inherited the business.

“I stayed with Collins Enterprises and eventually rose through the ranks. In 1955 I was made manager of the fishing fleet. Then in 1966, when the long-time manager of the canning plant resigned, I was made cannery manager as well.”

“I beg your pardon,” put in Jeremiah, looking mystified. “You were made manager of what?”

“The cannery,” Bill repeated. “Sorry. Do you know what canning is?”

Jeremiah shook his head. “I am not familiar with the term.”

“I guess it doesn’t exist yet. It’s a process for preserving food. You cook the food, pack it in a container and give it an airtight seal. The containers are metal cans; that’s where the term ‘canning’ comes from. Then you sterilize the food by pressure-cooking the cans to 130 degrees centigrade. It gives most foods a shelf life of around five years.”

“I understand,” Jeremiah said eagerly. “People are working to develop such a process now. I know there is particular interest in it in France. They are hoping to develop more efficient methods for provisioning their army.”

“I didn’t know that,” Bill admitted. “Guess one really does learn something new every day.” _Or a whole hell of a lot of somethings,_ his thoughts added, _if one happens to be time-traveling._

But it was time to get back to his story.

“In 1967 – just three months ago, for me – I married Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. She’s the head of the family and the owner of Collins Enterprises. In my time the Collins family is Liz, her daughter Carolyn, Liz’s younger brother Roger, and his ten-year-old son, David. There’s … been some trouble for the family recently.”

_There’s been no end of trouble, actually,_ he thought. _But you don’t need me to go into that._

“Roger and David just came back to Collinsport and moved in with Liz at Collinwood last year. It’s been a difficult time for all of them. It’s been worse for David than for anyone else. Since moving in with his aunt, he’s said he sees ghosts around the estate. At Collinwood itself, but mostly here in this house. This house was unoccupied for a long time; 80 years or so. When David moved in, he liked coming over here to play in the deserted house. He says he likes it because his friends the ghosts live here. He’s a lonely kid; doesn’t have any friends his own age. I guess that’s probably why he started seeing the ghosts.”

Frowning, Jeremiah asked quietly, “Whose ghosts?”

Bill shrugged and prayed that Jeremiah would not pick up on the evasiveness of his answer. “Family ghosts, from what David says. To hear him talk, there are a lot of them hanging around here. I guess a place like this can build up a lot of ghosts, over a few hundred years.”

“Yes,” Jeremiah murmured, with his frown unchanged. “I suppose it can.”

“At first,” Bill continued, “no one worried much about it. It seemed harmless enough. It was easy to say it was just his imagination. Even if he wasn’t imagining it, he didn’t seem to be under any threat.

“Recently, that changed. David’s gotten more and more frightened by what the ghosts are supposedly telling him. Yesterday—” _God,_ Bill thought, _was it only yesterday?_ “—he told his aunt one of the ghosts had given him a warning.”

Here was where he would really need to watch his step. He couldn’t let himself drop the slightest hint. He couldn’t let Jeremiah realize that the ghost under discussion was his own beloved niece.

“He said it told him the dead are angry. They want to destroy someone at Collinwood. Probably we still would’ve thought it was his imagination. Only a guest in the house told us she’d seen the ghost, too. She suggested we hold a séance to try and contact the spirits and ask for an explanation of the warning.”  

“Pardon me,” Jeremiah said. “I know the word _séance_ in French. It means a meeting. I take it the word means more in the context in which you’re using it?”

_I’ll be darned,_ Bill thought. _Chalk that up as yet another “something new” I’ve learned today._

It was pretty danged ironic if he suddenly had to act like an expert on séances. _But right here and now,_ he thought, _I guess that’s what I am. I’ve sat through two of the things. Jeremiah’s never heard of them._

“That’s right,” he said. “In my day it means … an organized effort to contact the spirits of the dead. A small group of people sits around a table, touching finger-tips on the tabletop. Usually they focus on the light of a candle or maybe a picture of the person they’re trying to contact. One member of the group takes the lead in … calling the spirit by name and asking it to join them.”

“Remarkable,” murmured Jeremiah Collins. “And are these séances common occurrences in your era?”

Bill had to grin at that. “Nope. They aren’t. Most people think it’s either crazy or a hoax. Or both.”

Jeremiah nodded. “Go on. Forgive me for interrupting.”

“Sure thing. Well, we gave it a try. My brother-in-law Roger called to the spirits. It seemed like something answered. Supposedly it started speaking through one of the young women at the table.”

Jeremiah asked incisively, “Was there any way to be certain it was really a spirit speaking through this young woman, rather than the woman herself practicing some deception?”

“Not as such,” Bill admitted. “Not except for knowing the girl and knowing she wouldn’t do anything like that.”

“I see.”

“The spirit, if that’s what it was, said it comes to David to tell him something. Roger had a hard time getting any sense out of it. It finally said it comes to tell David ‘how it all began.’ Roger asked the spirit to tell us that, instead. Then Vicki – the girl the spirit was speaking through – screamed.”

Bill tried to brace himself for the next part of the story. He told himself he had to just plow through it. It wouldn’t get easier to tell, no matter how he hemmed and hawed about it.

“The one thing we were told over and over was not to break the circle. We had to keep touching finger tips. We couldn’t break contact until the séance was over. When Vicki screamed, I forgot that. I jumped up to try and help her. Next thing I knew, I was here. On your new road. In the afternoon instead of the night. It didn’t take long before I started figuring out what had happened to me. Wasn’t any use denying it up at Collinwood, when I saw the house I live in still being built. That’s why I asked you what the date was, when I met you. When you said it’s 1795, that told me I’ve been sent 172 years into the past.”

For the first few moments, Jeremiah Collins was silent. Then he whispered again, “Remarkable. Truly, utterly remarkable.”

“Ay-yuh,” Bill said. “It’s remarkable. The question is, do you believe me?”

Jeremiah gave him a long, pondering look.

“I suppose that I have to believe you. Do I not? It is easier to believe your story than to believe anyone would invent a lie as complicated as this – with the inclusion of two world wars, séances, and the process of ‘canning!’”

Contemplatively, Jeremiah went on, “If you _have_ been sent 172 years into the past, have you any theories as to why this has taken place?”

Bill crossed his arms tightly over his chest. He wished the gesture could provide some defense against the fear that crept in on him when he thought about this.

“It could just be an accident. I’m hoping it means more than that. I’m hoping I’ve been sent here to accomplish something. The theory I’m working with is that I was sent here to find out ‘how it all began,’ like the spirit said. And that when I learn what ‘it’ is and how it started, I can find some way to change it.” He was probably trying to convince himself as much as to convince Jeremiah when he said, “Suppose that ‘it’ is a problem threatening the Collins family in 1795. If I can help solve the problem now, maybe that will fix things in my time, too.”

Jeremiah cast him another measuring stare. “That is no easy list of tasks. I think what lies ahead of you may be a greater challenge than if the story Barnabas told last night were true: than if you truly were the poet Dante, come back to seek your love beyond the boundaries of death.”

Bill said, “I guess the spirits wouldn’t send a man back in time to accomplish something easy.”

“No,” sighed Jeremiah. “I imagine they would not. Now, for God’s sake, before we discuss this any further, let us both sit down. And,” he added, “let us also both have a drink.”

“I wouldn’t say no to that,” conceded Bill.

Jeremiah went to his door and tugged on a tasseled cord that presumably connected to a bell in the servants’ wing. Then he told Bill, “Pull up a chair near the fireplace.” Jeremiah took a seat in the chair that was already placed in front of the hearth.

When Bill was likewise seated, Jeremiah said, “Let us see if my interpretation matches yours. You are working under the assumption that some difficulty threatens the Collins family in this time. That if you can identify and solve this mysterious problem, it may perhaps forestall whatever crisis will take place in your time – when spirits supposedly threaten the life of someone at Collinwood.”

“That’s right.”

“If all those assumptions are correct, it stands to reason that you will need to remain close to my family. If we are indeed the focus of this threat, you will have little chance to make any pertinent discovery if you are not here in the house with us.”

“That’s the way I see it,” Bill said.

Jeremiah told him, “It is fortunate that you told me the truth when you did. You will have noticed that my brother is not a patient man. I do not believe the tale of your amnesia could have passed muster with him for much longer. Probably tomorrow, or the next day at the latest, he would have informed you that your welcome in his house is at an end. But now you and I can work on the problem together. We should be able to construct a more durable reason for you to remain in proximity to my family.”

Bill let out a long breath of relief.

_God,_ he thought.   _My God. This may actually work._

With Jeremiah on his side – on his side and fully aware of what was at stake – maybe Bill could actually accomplish whatever these supposed spirits wanted him to do.

A knock sounded at the door. Jeremiah called, “Come in.”

It was Ben Stokes who had knocked. He stood in the doorway with a hesitant, surly sort of look. Bill wondered if Stokes was displeased to see Bill sitting there in apparent friendly conversation with Jeremiah Collins. But maybe that was just the way Ben Stokes usually looked.

“Did you ring for me, Mr. Jeremiah?”

“Yes, thank you, Ben. Please bring my toddy now. And one for Mr. Malloy as well,” Jeremiah said, before adding with a questioning look at Bill, “if that is acceptable to you?”

“Yes. Thanks.”

Stokes gave a little nodding bow and departed. Seeing him had suggested an idea to Bill.

“Maybe you could talk your brother into hiring me for some job on the estate. Assistant groundskeeper or something like that. Though I reckon Mr. Stokes wouldn’t be too pleased to be told I’d be working on his team.”

Jeremiah looked puzzled at first. Then he said, “Stokes? He isn’t our groundskeeper. We don’t have a groundskeeper at present; that is why portions of the estate have reached the condition they are in. Our old groundskeeper died a good many years back. He worked for us since our father’s time, and Joshua never hired anyone to replace him.”

With a pained, earnest frown Jeremiah kept on talking. Bill had the impression that all the man’s worries for his family were perpetually simmering away inside him, just under the surface. He seemed desperate for opportunities to speak of them.

_No one’s invented shrinks yet in 1795, have they? It’s too bad. Jeremiah really needs a weekly therapy session._

“When Joshua had his full health, he was a man of tremendous energy. It was well within his powers to oversee all work on the estate as well as the work of the shipyard. He hasn’t been capable of that level of activity for years now. But of course he will not admit that. If he would only cede some authority to me or to Barnabas – but you do not need to hear yet another catalogue of my family woes,” Jeremiah interrupted himself with a smile of apology. “It was major step for Joshua just to permit Stokes to work here as an odd-jobs-man. I suppose it was some level of admission that he could no longer cause all the needed work on the estate to occur by sheer force of will.”  

Jeremiah returned his thoughts to the question at hand. “I do not think Joshua would be willing to hire you; not without a good many letters of reference which of course we would be unable to produce. But I could hire you myself – to assist me at the shipyard, perhaps. Are you able to read and write? I assume you are, since you mentioned attending school here in Collinsport?”

“Yes,” Bill answered, reminding himself that it probably wasn’t a surprising question in this day and age. “I can read and write. But,” he admitted, “I’m not sure my handwriting looks right for 1795. It sure doesn’t look like the signatures on the Declaration of Independence.”

“Like the signatures on—” Jeremiah began, staring at Bill. “You’ve seen the Declaration of Independence?”

“Not the real thing. There was a picture of it in one of our school history books.”

Jeremiah nodded, not quite yet able to stop staring. “Well,” he said, clearly ordering himself to put the Declaration of Independence from his mind, “there is one way to answer with certainty the question of your handwriting.” He walked over to his desk, a massive piece of furniture on which the writing surface looked dwarfed by the glass-fronted bookcase looming over it. Taking a sheet of paper from one of the desk drawers, Jeremiah said, “If you would, Mr. Malloy, have the goodness to write a few lines. Then we will see how the handwriting styles of our two centuries compare.”

As he seated himself at the desk, Bill really did feel like he was back in school. Specifically like he was doing handwriting exercises in fourth grade or thereabouts, with old Miss Faulkner waiting to pounce with her ruler and rap the knuckles of any pupils who smudged their ink too much.

Jeremiah’s gleaming silver inkstand, carved all over with vines and flowers, had four quill pens standing in the center of it. Bill thought, _Quill pens can’t be_ that _different from the pens we learned to write with, can they?_ He picked out one of the quills. Of the two lidded pots on the inkstand, he figured the one with holes in the lid like a salt shaker wasn’t likely to contain the ink. So he opened the other one and found that he had made the right guess.

It was going to be one heck of a challenge making himself write in cursive again instead of his usual printing. He thought, _Talk about having about a flashback to my schooldays._ He tried to picture in his mind how all the letters had looked in his old handwriting exercise books.

Bill dipped the quill in the ink. Carefully and feeling like his hand was all thumbs, he wrote, “ _Fourscore and seven years ago our forefathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal._ ”

“Think that’ll be enough?” he asked Jeremiah. In his thoughts he added, _I danged well hope so, because I don’t know how much more I can remember of the Gettysburg Address._

“It ought to be,” Jeremiah answered. He looked deep in thought as he studied Bill’s writing. “Yes,” he said, “I think your handwriting should do. If I need to send a particularly important letter I don’t think I’ll have you pen it for me, but it should do perfectly well for everyday purposes.” With a look of wondering curiosity he added, “What is this you have written here?”

“The beginning of a speech that’ll become famous in about 75 years.”

Ben Stokes returned with the two toddies, which he set down on the little decorative table in front of the fireplace. When the odd-jobs-man had gone again and the two of them had settled down with their tankards, Jeremiah said, “I’ll hire you as my private secretary. Joshua has been telling me I need to take a more active role in the shipbuilding business. This hiring of a secretary can be the first step in my turning over a new leaf. I’ll pay you from my own funds, so Joshua won’t raise much objection over your salary. Does 25 dollars per month sound sufficient?”

_I don’t have a clue,_ Bill thought. He had no idea of what typical wages and the cost of living were like in 1795. But he didn’t figure Jeremiah Collins was likely to stiff him on salary.

“I’m sure it does,” he said. “It’s … good of you to do all this. I want to thank you for everything you’ve done. Everything you’re doing. Before you knew the truth, and now.”

Jeremiah waved away Bill’s thanks. “It makes sense for us to be allies. Our cause is the same. If I am helping you to protect your family, you are helping me to protect mine. Or perhaps I should say we are protecting the same family, only two centuries apart.” Jeremiah took a large swig of his toddy and then went on with his planning. “We will say that you recovered your memory tonight.” With a smile at Bill, he added, “Perhaps you are recovering it even now. Perhaps the countess’ _tarot_ reading was the crucial element that brought your memories flooding back to you.”

Scratching the bridge of his nose, Bill speculated, “Ay-yuh. I wonder what it was that brought everything back. The part about the Empress, or all the warnings of doom?”

“Having recovered your memory, you are now able to tell me that you were, after all, in the carriage accident. You had hailed the coach and asked to ride along with them when they reached the foot of Widow’s Hill – it needs to have taken place outside of town, so there’ll be nothing strange in none of the villagers being able to corroborate your story. In the accident you were thrown from the coach and you struck your head, which caused your temporary loss of memory.”

“Why did I want to go up Widow’s Hill to begin with?”

“You were on your way to find me and solicit employment. That course of action was recommended to you by … by my friend Mr. Barstow, shipbuilder of Pembroke. Let us say you were working for him, and he found you to be a good and reliable worker. However, he was compelled to reduce the number of workers at his shipyard, so he suggested to you that you seek employment with me. Barstow _has_ had to reduce his expenses recently,” Jeremiah added parenthetically, “so it should make a believable story. You don’t happen to know the area around Pembroke and Plymouth, do you?”

"Plymouth, Massachusetts? Actually, yes,” Bill said. “My mother’s family is from Cape Cod. From Barnstable. We went there for vacations when I was a kid. I should be able to describe it well enough if anyone asks me. I don’t reckon that area’s changed all that much in a couple of hundred years.”

“Good. That all falls out excellently well. You can say that you are from Barnstable, and you can believably describe it if anyone confronts you on your origins. But it is far enough from Collinsport that few of our people should be able to prove that you do not actually hail from there.”

Jeremiah continued, “You will need to accompany me to the shipyard from time to time, so we can maintain the fiction that your employment is the primary reason for your presence here. But we should be able to arrange matters so that the majority of your time is spent here, to facilitate whatever investigations you may need to undertake.” After finishing off the dregs of his toddy, Jeremiah observed with a weary smile, “Since you will now be an employee rather than a guest, you will be expected to dine alone or with the other servants, instead of with the family. After the delightful experience that was tonight’s dinner, I am certain you will feel that loss keenly.”

“Thanks,” Bill said. “I should be able to live with the loss.”

Gradually the humor left Jeremiah’s gaze. He leaned forward. Earnestly but with more than a hint of challenge, he said, “I hope you will now feel able to be entirely truthful with me. It was obvious this evening that your meeting with my sister-in-law affected you deeply. Is it true that Naomi reminds you of someone?”

“Yes,” Bill answered him grimly. “Mrs. Collins looks very much like my wife.”

Jeremiah regarded Bill with surprise. “Ah,” he said. “Now I understand.”

Bill’s outrage came rushing back to him. It sat with a sickening, burning weight in his guts.

He knew he ought to keep his mouth shut. The words raced out of him anyway.

“Why does she put up with him? Why does she endure his bullcrap? How has she stayed married to him all these years?”

Carefully Jeremiah inquired, “By ‘she’ and ‘him,’ I presume you mean Naomi and Joshua?”

“Who else?”

“What else is she to do?” was Jeremiah’s quiet-voiced question. “Would you have her desert her husband?”

“If that’s the way he treats her,” Bill growled, “yes.”

Solemnly Jeremiah Collins studied Bill. “Perhaps,” he said, “such matters have become simpler by the year 1967. It would not be a simple matter now. If Naomi were to abandon her marriage, she would lose her children. Of a surety, Joshua would permit her to see neither of them. Perhaps Barnabas might circumvent that ban from time to time. But for Sarah, it would be impossible. And where would Naomi go? By what means would she support herself? All the property she brought to the marriage is legally Joshua’s. The blow to her pride would be terrible were she to ask for shelter with either of her sisters’ families. From being the mistress of this household, she would be reduced to the status of a dependent. She would feel herself a burden upon them. It is not even certain that they would long permit her to remain with them. Family loyalties are not always stronger than shame. They would surely feel the shame of harboring a woman who had thus trod upon the sanctity of her marriage.”

“Sanctity?” Bill demanded, almost yelling. “What the hell is so sanctified about the way he treats her?”

Bill jumped up, sending the chair skidding across the floor. He started pacing. “If her sisters wouldn’t help her, what about you and Barnabas? How can you just do nothing? How do you sit there at the dinner table listening to him spew that crap at her night after night?”

For a moment anger sparked in Jeremiah’s face. The moment quickly passed.

“May I remind you,” he said, “you have known my family for the span of precisely one day. You know very little of us, or of the approximately 40 years of Joshua and Naomi’s marriage.” Jeremiah glanced at his empty tankard. He sighed. “Barnabas and I have nearly as few options available to us as does Naomi. Suppose that she were to break with Joshua, and that Barnabas or I gave her material assistance. There is every likelihood that Joshua would disown us. Perhaps it would be no great calamity if I were to be thrown out to make my own way in the world. But what of Barnabas? What of Barnabas who will soon be married; who is on the threshold of founding his own branch of the Collins line? Can you expect him to think blithely of the possibility that his father might cut him off without a cent?”  

“He wasn’t always on the threshold of marriage.”

For once the tone of Jeremiah’s voice sounded a lot like Joshua’s. “No. He was not. Those who have never had the expectation of an inheritance can afford to talk lightly of the prospect of losing one.” He sighed again. Then he stood up, meeting Bill’s angry gaze eye-to-eye.

“Mr. Malloy,” Jeremiah said quietly, “I regret that my nephew and I have not lived up to what you would have us be. I can understand your anger and I respect it. But I will take the liberty of pointing out that you must restrain your anger. Attempting to become a crusader for my sister-in-law’s happiness is likely, at the very least, to get you evicted from Collins House. How, then, would you have any chance of uncovering the mystery that has caused you to be sent backward in time? I believe I can tell you without any shadow of doubt that the state of my brother and sister-in-law’s marriage is not the problem you were sent here to investigate. Certainly, this year is notthe moment in time when that particular difficulty in our family began.”

Bill glared at him. But of course he knew that Jeremiah was right.

“All right,” Bill said finally. “I apologize.”

“Your apology is accepted. And I apologize,” Jeremiah continued, with the hint of a smile, “that my family and I have proved to you so thoroughly that your wife’s ancestors have feet of clay.”

“Everyone’s ancestors do,” Bill muttered. “Most people just don’t have the chance of finding out about it in person.”

Jeremiah glanced away and then walked over to the fireplace. He stood there gazing at the intricate model ship displayed on the mantelpiece.

His voice barely audible, Jeremiah said at last, “When you told me the real explanation for your presence here, it led me to wonder … if Naomi might have been the ghost you attempted to contact in your séance. If hers might be the spirit that has sent you here to our time. You so clearly recognized her, and the recognition caused you such obvious dismay.”

Bill Malloy thought, _Oh, shit._

“No,” he said flatly. “It wasn’t her.”

Jeremiah turned to look steadily at Bill. “I must ask you to give me your honest answer. What do you truly think of these alleged spirits? Do you believe in them? Do you believe in the ghosts that the boy in your time says he has befriended? Do you believe in the spirit or spirits that supposedly sent you to this time?”

_There’s a passel of questions that won’t be any fun to answer._

Bill began slowly, “I’d have a harder time answering that if I wasn’t here. If I was still in 1967 … I don’t know what I’d say. I want to believe David. My gut reaction tells me to believe him. There’s a number of people around town who’ve supposedly seen that same ghost – the one who gave David that warning. If it is a ghost at all. There’s always the possibility that the person those other people saw is a living human being.”

That had been a close call. Bill had been within a breath of calling the ghost “she” instead of “it.”

Vowing to be more careful, he went on. “A lot of things have happened that make a damn sight more sense if there are ghosts involved. A lot of strange things. And there are people I trust who are convinced they’ve seen ghosts around Collinwood.”

_One ghost in particular,_ Bill thought. _One ghost in particular who I have to be God-damn careful not to mention by name, gender, or any other detail. It wouldn’t be much better to let Jeremiah know Josette’s supposedly a ghost, than that little Sarah is one._

Bill said, “I guess I’d feel a lot less certain about the ghosts if I wasn’t so certain about the people who swear they’ve seen them.”

He still hadn’t stated the reason that mattered to him most. Almost as if he was talking to himself, he admitted, “But the real reason I believe in the ghosts … is because if I don’t believe in them, I’ll go mad. I have to believe some conscious thing sent me here. Something that thinks and makes decisions. If something like that _didn’t_ send me, how am I going to get home?

“If a ghost sent me here, a ghost can send me back again. If it wasn’t a ghost that sent me, I’m probably trapped.”

Jeremiah had listened solemnly throughout Bill’s rambling explanation. When it was clear that Bill had no more to say, he answered, “I am sorry you must face this. For your sake I hope these spirits truly exist. For other reasons … I confess myself to be far less comfortable with the concept.”

“Mr. Malloy,” Jeremiah continued, “if we are indeed to be allies, each of us must have full trust in the other. I do not believe that you have been fully honest with me. I ask you to correct that now.”

That was not where Bill wanted this conversation to go. But he met Jeremiah’s gaze and demanded, “How do you think I’m not being honest with you?”

“The ghosts,” said Jeremiah Collins. “I believe you know who they are. You must tell me, Mr. Malloy. Whose ghosts are going to haunt Collinwood?”

 


End file.
